Minnesota DWI Temporary Driving Permit: The 14-Day Window

When a Minnesota officer arrests you for DWI and serves the Notice and Order of Revocation, they confiscate your physical driver's license and hand you a temporary driving permit. That permit is your legal authorization to drive for the next 14 days — and understanding what happens when it expires is one of the most important things in the days after your arrest.

How the 14-Day Permit Works

The temporary permit was extended from 7 days to 14 days under the 2025 HF 2130 reforms. It functions as a full, unrestricted driving permit — no limits on hours, destinations, or purposes. You can drive to work, run errands, and go about your normal routine for two weeks.

The 14-day period applies to breath test failures and breath test refusals. For blood or urine test refusals under a search warrant, the temporary permit is limited to 7 days under Section 171.177. If you refused a blood or urine test requested under a search warrant, confirm the expiration date on your paperwork.

The temporary permit also serves as your identification for driving purposes. Law enforcement will accept it as a valid license during the 14-day period.

What Happens on Day 15

On Day 15, your temporary permit expires and your driving privileges are fully revoked. If you haven't taken action before this date, you cannot legally drive at all — not to work, not to court, not to treatment. Driving on a revoked license in Minnesota is a gross misdemeanor (up to one year in jail and a $3,000 fine).

This is why the first two weeks after a DWI arrest are the action window. You need to decide on and initiate one of two pathways before Day 15 arrives:

Ignition interlock enrollment. If you apply for the ignition interlock program and get approved before your temporary permit expires, you can transition directly from the temporary permit to driving with the interlock device. There's no gap in driving privileges — no waiting period, no restrictions on when or where you can drive. You just need the device installed and the paperwork processed.

Limited license (work permit) application. If you're eligible for a limited license (BAC under 0.16, no prior administrative incidents in the lookback window), you can apply — but you still have to serve a 15-day hard waiting period where no driving is permitted. That means even if you apply before Day 14, you'll have at least one day with no driving privileges (Day 15 through whenever the limited license is approved).

The Strategic Calculus

The interlock path eliminates the gap entirely. You can drive on Day 15 if you have the device installed and the program enrollment approved. The limited license path guarantees at least a brief period where you can't drive at all, because the 15-day waiting period starts from Day 1 (your arrest date) and your temporary permit also runs from Day 1 — so they overlap, but the waiting period extends one day past the temporary permit.

In practice, the limited license often takes several days or more to process even after the waiting period ends, meaning the actual gap can be a week or longer.

For someone whose livelihood depends on being able to drive daily — a single parent, a shift worker without public transit access, someone in rural Minnesota — the interlock path often wins purely on timing, even though it carries ongoing monthly costs of $70–$140 for the device lease and calibration.

What You Need to Do in the 14-Day Window

Regardless of which pathway you choose, several things need to happen during the temporary permit period:

1. Retrieve your vehicle from the impound lot (Day 1–2)
2. Contact your insurance company to confirm active coverage and arrange for the insurance certificate filing (Form PS35016) if you're enrolling in interlock
3. Mark two critical dates on your calendar: Day 15 (permit expiration) and Day 60 (Implied Consent petition deadline)
4. Decide whether to file an Implied Consent petition challenging the administrative revocation — this is separate from your driving pathway decision
5. Contact an ignition interlock vendor or begin the limited license application process, depending on your chosen path

The 14-day window feels like breathing room, but it goes fast. By Day 10, you should have your pathway decision made and the paperwork in motion.

The Minnesota First-Offense DUI Guide includes a day-by-day timeline for this critical two-week window, with the specific forms, offices, and contact points for each step.

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