News Item
Rita Coyle DeMeules Named Supreme Court Commissioner

Posted: Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The Minnesota Supreme Court has appointed Rita Coyle DeMeules to succeed retiring Supreme Court Commissioner Richard Slowes. She will join the court December 12 and assume her role as Commissioner on January 12, 2012.

Coyle DeMeules has served as an Assistant Attorney General since 2006, where she represented the State of Minnesota and Minnesota agencies before state and federal trial and appellate courts.  In that position, she provided legal research, analysis, and advice to state agencies on litigation and agency policies, and served as principal attorney responsible for trials, motions, pretrial activities, and arguments before the courts. From 1990-2004, she was a partner and associate at the law firm of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi, LLP, in Minneapolis, and served as an Adjunct Professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul from 2004 to 2010; and from 1991 to 1993.

She also served as law clerk to the Hon. Michael J. Davis of the United States District Court, District of Minnesota, from 2004 to 2005; for the Hon. Donald P. Lay of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in St. Paul from 1989 to 1990; and for the Hon. Glenn E. Kelley and Hon. M. Jeanne Coyne of the Minnesota Supreme Court from 1988 to 1989.

Coyle DeMeules received her law degree from William Mitchell College of Law.

Commissioner Richard Slowes came to the court in November 1998.  Prior to his service as Supreme Court Commissioner, he worked for more than 20 years at the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, the last 12 as Assistant Solicitor General and manager of the Civil Litigation Division. 

The Supreme Court Commissioner serves as chief counsel to the Minnesota Supreme Court and provides legal research, advice, and memoranda recommending dispositions in a wide variety of civil and criminal legal cases that come before the Court, and supervises a staff of senior level attorneys.