MINNEAPOLIS — A federal appeals court will hear oral arguments today on whether Minnesota’s program that keeps sex offenders confined indefinitely after they complete their prison sentences is unconstitutional and needs to be reformed.

U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank declared the treatment program unconstitutional last year, citing how rarely anyone gets released from it. He didn’t shut it down, but ordered changes including risk assessments of all the more than 700 civilly committed offenders in the program to determine who should be put on a pathway for release.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in December put Frank’s order on hold so a three-judge panel could hear the state’s appeal in the long-running legal fight. No immediate ruling is expected after the Tuesday hearing in St. Louis.

Only a handful of offenders have been provisionally released to community-based settings in the Minnesota Sex Offender Program’s 20-plus-year history, which is why the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit said it’s tantamount to a life sentence. While civilly committed offenders in California, Wisconsin, New Jersey and other states are allowed to re-enter society after completing treatment, no one has been fully discharged from Minnesota’s program.

Lawyers for the offenders wrote in their brief that the case arose because of “years of inaction” by the state despite repeated warnings by outside experts that program was “broken, unsustainable and likely unconstitutional.” They said the district court correctly found that the program lacks the necessary safeguards and that it fails to provide less-restrictive alternative treatment settings to the program’s prison-like facilities in St. Peter and Moose Lake.w

Attorneys for the state countered that Frank prejudged the case and improperly took sides, which they said requires reversing his decision, removing him from the case, and assigning a different judge to consider any issues the appeals court remands to the lower court. They noted that Frank urged the state well ahead of the trial to make substantial changes “in the interests of justice” to a program that he called “clearly broken.”

“The evidence presented at trial showed that MSOP is a well-run therapeutic environment, with fulsome procedural protections available to committed individuals who seek a reduction in custody,” they wrote.

The state also argued that the plaintiffs failed to prove anyone is unlawfully confined to the program and that they conceded at trial that at least some the offenders in it are too dangerous to release. They said the relief the judge ordered “far exceeds what is necessary and appropriate.”