An administrative law judge says Minnesota regulators failed to prove Golden Touch Health Care posed an imminent danger to residents, a finding supporters of owner Sekou Dukuly call long overdue.
ST. PAUL, Minn. – For two months, Sekou Hussein Dukuly has watched the business he built in the Twin Cities suburbs sit empty, its residents relocated and its licenses frozen by order of the state. This week, a judge told Minnesota health officials they got it wrong.
In a ruling dated October 14, 2026, Administrative Law Judge Suzanne Todnem concluded that the Minnesota Department of Health “prematurely” suspended the three assisted living licenses held by Dukuly’s company, Golden Touch Health Care LLC. She found the department failed to show that the company’s problems posed an imminent risk of harm to residents, the legal standard required for an emergency suspension. Her formal recommendation to Health Commissioner Brooke Cunningham is to rescind the suspension.
For Dukuly and the Liberian community members who have followed his case closely, the language was unusually direct. Reading the judge’s findings, one supporter said, was the first time in weeks that anyone in authority had said out loud what the family had argued from the start: that the state moved before it had the evidence.
The ruling is a recommendation, not a final order, and it does not resolve every dispute facing the company. But on the question before the judge, it was a clear win.
The Day Everything Changed
Golden Touch Health Care operates three licensed assisted living facilities in Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center, serving residents with physical and mental health needs. Two of the licenses date to August 2021, and a third was issued in April 2025. The Department of Health renewed all three earlier this year.
On August 19, 2026, investigators visited each facility. By the end of the day, the department had issued orders immediately suspending all three licenses for 90 days. Golden Touch complied, transferring all 11 of its residents to other facilities.
The department’s reasoning rested on two concerns. First, as of August 12, Dukuly was no longer registered with the state’s licensing board as the director of record for the facilities, and no replacement had been registered. Second, the state Department of Human Services (DHS) had signaled it would withhold Medical Assistance payments to the company starting September 21, citing credible allegations of fraud that it was investigating. The health department concluded that unclear leadership combined with a coming loss of revenue would likely disrupt care.
Golden Touch appealed within days. On October 1, its attorneys from the Greene Espel law firm faced off against two assistant attorneys general in an expedited hearing before Judge Todnem.
A Narrow Question, a Clear Answer
The hearing was limited by statute to two questions: whether there was sufficient evidence of violations posing an imminent risk of harm to residents’ health and safety, and whether the suspension should remain in effect.
The judge began with the meaning of the word that decided the case. “Imminent” is not defined in the statute, so she used its ordinary meaning: likely to happen very soon. Then she measured the department’s evidence against it, and the evidence fell short.
Thirty-Three Days
The department’s first argument concerned the coming payment withhold. But the suspension was issued on August 19, and the withhold was not scheduled to begin until September 21, a gap of 33 days.
“By definition,” Judge Todnem wrote, any concerns resulting from a disruption in revenue were not imminent. Golden Touch had experienced no change in its revenue. According to the findings, company staff did not even know the withhold notices were coming until the investigator raised the issue during the on-site visit.
The judge also noted that the DHS notices gave Golden Touch until August 29 to tell the state whether it would keep serving residents without Medical Assistance payments. By suspending the licenses first, she found, the department took that decision away from the company.
She was pointed about the consequences. The company’s nurse supervisor, Ishmael Komara, testified that Dukuly had financial options to keep the facilities running for six months. The testimony was not backed by documents, but the judge found it reasonable that the company had not locked in financing for facilities the state had already shut down. “It is not appropriate to strip a licensee of its options and then use the lack of exercising those options against it,” she wrote.
The department’s second argument concerned leadership. Minnesota law requires every assisted living facility to employ a licensed director who is registered with the state board as the director of record, and it was undisputed that none was registered after August 12.
The judge did not excuse that. She rejected the company’s suggestion that approval of its replacement director’s application was a mere formality, and she found that the facilities were in violation of the statute.
But a violation is not the same as an emergency. A department official conceded at the hearing that when a facility’s only problem is a missing registered director, the department’s standard practice is to issue a correction order telling the facility to fix it. The judge found the department never showed why this case called for something far more drastic than its usual response.
The company’s explanation for the gap was a leadership transition. On August 13, the day after Dukuly’s registration lapsed, Tabitha Vickie Briggs, a registered nurse who holds an assisted living director license, applied for a Shared Director License that would allow her to lead all three facilities. Dukuly’s brother-in-law and company coverage administrator, Sheikh Dukuly, who also holds a director license, was on site, as was Komara, who holds one too. In effect, Golden Touch argued, three licensed directors were working at or available to the facilities even though the paperwork had not caught up.
Piling On
The department’s strongest card was supposed to be the combination: that a leadership gap plus a revenue disruption together created the danger. The judge was unpersuaded.
She called one element of the department’s argument “disingenuous.” The department had pointed out that staff did not present a six-month plan to stay operational after payments stopped. But the company had not yet received any withhold notice, and the investigator never asked for such a plan.
She also observed that the investigator spoke with Sheikh Dukuly, Briggs, one resident and three unlicensed staff members, but did not ask staff how often they were present at the facilities and did not ask to speak with Sekou Dukuly. And she found it unclear when the department first became concerned about the director issue. The record suggested officials did not view it as an imminent threat until the DHS notice arrived, a notice still 33 days from taking effect.
Her conclusion on the combined theory was blunt: even taken together, the record did not establish an imminent risk of harm to residents.
What the Judge Did Not Say
The ruling is favorable, but it is not a clean sweep, and an accurate account must include its limits.
The judge sided with the department on the underlying violation, finding that the facilities lacked a registered director after August 12. She also noted that the company’s explanation for staff confusion about who was in charge did not fully hold up. One staff member told the investigator Sekou Dukuly was the director, another named Sheikh Dukuly, and none named Briggs.
More importantly, the ruling does not touch the DHS fraud investigation. The judge made no findings about the allegations, and nothing in her report lifts the payment withhold, which is a separate action by a separate agency. The department’s notices of revocation, which are also separate, are likewise outside this case.
And the recommendation itself is not binding. Both sides have ten calendar days to file exceptions. The Commissioner then has ten business days after the record closes to issue a final decision, which she may adopt, reject or modify. Any party can then appeal under Minnesota’s administrative procedure act.
The judge also observed that because no residents are currently in Golden Touch’s care, there was insufficient evidence to keep the suspension in place.
Why Supporters Call It Vindication
For Dukuly’s supporters, those caveats do not diminish what the ruling establishes. A state agency exercised one of its most powerful emergency tools, shutting down three licensed homes without a prior hearing, and an independent judge reviewing the evidence found the agency had not justified it.
That matters in a field where a license is the entire business. An immigrant entrepreneur who spends years building a regulated care operation can see it dismantled in a single afternoon, with residents relocated and revenue stopped, long before any hearing takes place. The expedited hearing process exists to check that power, and in this case the check worked in Golden Touch’s favor.
Members of the Liberian community, which has deep roots in the Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center area, have followed the case with intense interest. In social media posts after the ruling, supporters described it as proof of Dukuly’s resilience and credited his faith. One close friend wrote that “God has the final say,” and asked critics who had celebrated the company’s troubles why they had not prayed for his success instead.
That friend’s post also reflects how personal the case became. When the suspensions were first reported, some in the community reacted with gloating or gossip, a response that stung the family and its allies. The judge’s findings have, for now, given them an answer grounded in the record rather than in rumor.
For a man whose supporters say he has endured the storm with his head up, that finding is not the end of the road. But it is the first time the record has spoken, and what it said was that the state moved too soon.
The Minnesota Department of Health and Golden Touch Health Care did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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