COLUMBUS — A federal appeals court on Monday overturned an order requiring Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost to advance a citizen-proposed constitutional amendment to end qualified immunity from civil lawsuits for police officers and other government employees.
The move assures the backers of the proposed amendment will not have time to gather the more than 413,000 valid signatures of registered voters by the July 3 deadline to appear on the Nov. 5 presidential election ballot.
The entire bench of the Cincinnati-based U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals will now hear the case. A 2-1 decision of one of its panels had ordered the Republican attorney general to forward the proposed amendment to the Ohio Ballot Board, the next step in the citizen initiative process.
The three-judge panel had overturned a lower court ruling and granted the petitioners a preliminary injunction after Mr. Yost repeatedly rejected proposed summary language that would have been shown to would-be petition signers.
Despite multiple revisions over a long period of time, Mr. Yost found that the language, as well as the title, did not accurately reflect what the proposed amendment would do. The judicial panel found that the attorney general's actions imposed an "undue burden" on the petitioners' rights.
Mr. Yost has argued that this case should be heard by the Ohio Supreme Court, where the case had originally been filed. The petitioners had moved the case to federal court after the state court refused to expedite its consideration of the case.
The attorney general’s review of the summary language is the first step in the initiative process. Once approved, the petitions would then move to the bipartisan ballot board to sign off on whether the proposed change contains a single constitutional amendment requiring one set of petitions and a single vote at the polls.
"Once signature collection begins, the only way for the Attorney General to unwind the injunction will be to pull the rug out from under Ohio voters who have signed petitions that include the March summary," Mr. Yost's office argued before the 6th Circuit.
"If that would not result in voter confusion, it is hard to imagine what would," it wrote.
The plaintiffs, however, countered that they would simply stop gathering signatures if the injunction were later reversed. They argued that Mr. Yost was required to immediately comply with the three-judge panel's preliminary injunction.
"Yost is unlikely to succeed on the merits because the panel correctly held that his exercise of his unilateral authority to block Plaintiffs’ proposed amendment and summary, without any meaningful opportunity for judicial review, violated their First Amendment rights," the petitioners argued.
The proposed amendment would allow those who feel that their constitutional rights have been violated to sue police officers or other government workers for their actions in the line of duty. Their government employers could be liable for unlimited compensatory and noneconomic damages.
Various versions of the proposal have been percolating for several years but none have gotten past the attorney general's initial review.
A separate case filed by advocates for a voters' bill of rights is still pending before the Supreme Court. It makes similar accusations that the attorney general has blocked their access to the ballot.
First Published June 17, 2024, 4:10 p.m.
