NPA MD, Sekou Dukuly
Monrovia-Mr. Sekou Hussein Dukuly, current Managing Director of the National Port Authority (NPA), has been vindicated after a Minnesota court judge ruled that his three Care Homes were wrongly shut down.
An administrative law judge finds the state failed to prove Golden Touch Health Care posed any imminent danger to residents, and recommends the suspension be lifted.
The ruling comes two months after Dukuly watched the business he spent years building stand silent, its residents relocated, its licenses frozen, its name passed from mouth to mouth in a community quick to judge.
But this week, the story changed after the record finally spoke, and did so in his favor.
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.
The department, she found, failed to meet the legal standard that justifies an emergency shutdown, proof that residents faced an imminent risk of harm.
Her recommendation to Health Commissioner Brooke Cunningham is plain that the suspension be rescinded.
For Dukuly’s family and the Liberian community that has followed every turn of this case, the ruling confirmed what they had insisted from the first day.
The state acted before it had the evidence. Golden Touch operates three licensed assisted living facilities in Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center, caring for residents with physical and mental health needs.
Two licenses date to August 2021; a third was issued in April 2025. The Department of Health renewed all three earlier this year, a record of standing with the very regulator that would later move against it.
On August 19, 2026, investigators visited each facility. Before the day ended, the department had suspended all three licenses for 90 days. Golden Touch complied without resistance, transferring all 11 residents to other homes.
The department offered two reasons. First, as of August 12, Dukuly was no longer registered with the state licensing board as director of record, and no replacement had yet been registered. Second, the Department of Human Services (DHS) had signaled it would withhold Medical Assistance payments beginning September 21, citing fraud allegations under investigation.
Together, the health department argued, these threatened the continuity of care.Golden Touch appealed within days. On October 1, its attorneys from Greene Espel met two assistant attorneys general before Judge Todnem in an expedited hearing.
By statute, the judge had to answer a narrow question, did the evidence show violations posing an imminent risk to residents’ health and safety?
This is because the law does not define “imminent,” she gave the word its ordinary meaning, likely to happen very soon.
Measured against that standard, the state’s case collapsed. The suspension came on August 19. The payment withhold was not set to begin until September 21. That is 33 days.
“By definition,” Judge Todnem wrote, concerns arising from a future loss of revenue were not imminent. Golden Touch’s revenue had not changed at all. Indeed, the findings show the company’s staff did not even know the withhold notices were coming until the investigator mentioned them during the visit.
The judge went further. The DHS notices gave Golden Touch until August 29 to decide whether it would continue serving residents without Medical Assistance.
By suspending the licenses first, the health department took that choice out of the company’s hands entirely.Nurse supervisor Ishmael Komara testified that Dukuly had the financial means to keep the homes running for six months.
The judge found it entirely reasonable that the company had not secured formal financing for facilities the state had already closed. Her rebuke was one of the sharpest lines in the ruling, “It is not appropriate to strip a licensee of its options and then use the lack of exercising those options against it.”
On leadership, the judge was candid that Minnesota requires every assisted living facility to have a licensed director registered as director of record, and none was registered after August 12.
She found that a violation and declined to treat the replacement director’s pending approval as a formality.
But a violation is not an emergency, and the state’s own witness made that clear. A department official conceded at the hearing that when a missing registered director is a facility’s only problem, the department’s standard response is a correction order: fix it.
The department never explained why Golden Touch deserved the most drastic tool in its arsenal instead of its routine remedy.
And the facilities were far from leaderless. On August 13, the day after Dukuly’s registration lapsed, registered nurse Tabitha Vickie Briggs, a licensed assisted living director, applied for a Shared Director License to lead all three homes. Sheikh Dukuly, the company’s coverage administrator and also a licensed director, was on site.
So was Komara, who holds a director license as well. Three licensed directors were working at or available to the facilities. Only the paperwork lagged behind.”
“The department’s final argument was that the leadership gap and the looming revenue loss, taken together, created danger. The judge rejected it.She called one part of the department’s reasoning “disingenuous.”
The state faulted staff for failing to present a plan to stay open for six months after payments stopped, yet the company had received no withhold notice, and the investigator never asked for any such plan.She also found the investigation thin. The investigator spoke with Sheikh Dukuly, Briggs, one resident and three unlicensed staff, but never asked how often directors were present and never sought to speak with Sekou Dukuly himself.
The record suggested officials did not treat the director issue as urgent until the DHS notice arrived – a notice still 33 days from taking effect.Her conclusion was unequivocal: even combined, the evidence did not establish imminent risk to residents.
Fairness requires stating the limits of the ruling, and Dukuly’s case is strong enough to bear them.
The judge upheld the finding that the facilities lacked a registered director after August 12, and noted that staff gave inconsistent answers about who was in charge. The ruling does not address the separate DHS fraud investigation; the judge made no findings on those allegations, and the payment withhold remains a matter for another agency.
The department’s separate notices of revocation also fall outside this case.The recommendation is not yet final. Both sides have 10 calendar days to file exceptions, after which the Commissioner has 10 business days to adopt, reject or modify it. Any party may then appeal.
The judge also noted that with no residents currently in Golden Touch’s care, there was insufficient evidence to keep the suspension in place.
None of these caveats diminishes the central truth of the ruling. A state agency used one of its most severe powers, closing three licensed homes in a single afternoon without a prior hearing, and an independent judge, weighing the evidence, found that power had not been justified.
In this industry, a license is the business. An immigrant entrepreneur can spend years building a regulated care operation and watch it dismantled before a single hearing is held. The expedited review exists precisely to restrain that power. In this case, it did its work.
The Liberian community, deeply rooted in Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center, received the news with relief and celebration. Supporters spoke of Dukuly’s resilience and his faith. One close friend wrote that “God has the final say,” and asked those who had rejoiced at the company’s troubles why they had not prayed for his success instead.
The case had become painfully personal. When the suspensions first broke, gossip and gloating moved faster than facts. Now there is an answer grounded not in rumor but in a judge’s written findings.
For a man his supporters say has walked through the storm with his head held high, the road is not yet over. But for the first time, the record has spoken. And it said 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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