Minnesota’s Supreme Court ruled on Friday that Republicans in the state’s House had lacked a quorum to conduct business last week while Democratic representatives were absent, boycotting the opening days of the state’s legislative session.
The decision marked the second time the state’s highest court has been drawn into a dispute over control of the Legislature in recent days — one indication of the tumult that has played out in Minnesota’s Capitol as the parties vie for control.
Its chaotic start has underscored the challenging political landscape Gov. Tim Walz returned home to face. In addition to losing his bid for the vice presidency, his party lost its narrow majority in the Minnesota House.
In Friday’s ruling, the court said Republicans were one seat short of the 68 lawmakers required to conduct business on the House floor. Over the objections of Minnesota’s secretary of state, Republican lawmakers opened the session unilaterally last week and elected their House leader, Representative Lisa Demuth, as speaker.
The ruling appeared to render that appointment null, forcing party leaders to go back to the negotiating table as they awaited the result of a special election that was widely expected to leave each party with an equal number of seats in the chamber.
Democrats lost their majority in the state House in November, when each party won 67 seats, leaving them tied. Party leaders reached a tentative power-sharing agreement after the election. But the deal unraveled in December after a judge determined that one of the newly elected Democrats had not met the residency requirements to run for his seat.
After that ruling, Ms. Demuth asserted that she should be able to serve as speaker for the next two years. She also said her party would refuse to seat a second Democratic lawmaker who narrowly won his seat, and whose victory was called into question over a handful of ballots that were accidentally discarded.
Democrats called that an overreach and decided to boycott the opening week of the session. They initially hoped to return to the Capitol, with the parties tied, after Jan. 28, the date Mr. Walz had set for a special election to fill the seat of the candidate who did not meet the residency requirements.
Yet last week, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Walz had acted prematurely in setting that date, which meant the impasse over control of the House could drag on for weeks. A new date for that election has not been set.
Leaders from both parties expressed hope on Friday that they would soon be back to work.
“Now that it is clear Republicans must work with Democrats for the House to operate, I am hopeful we will be able to shortly negotiate an acceptable path forward,” Representative Melissa Hortman, the top Democrat in the House, said in a statement.
Ms. Demuth, for her part, urged Democrats to end their boycott. “House Republicans will be showing up to work on Monday,” she said.
While Senate Democrats had expected to start the new session with a one-seat majority, that too became imperiled after one of the party’s senators died of cancer in December. Democrats expect to reclaim their majority in that chamber on Tuesday after a special election is held in that senator’s district, where the party enjoys a broad advantage.
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