COLUMBUS — Last week’s ruling that Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost cannot reject summary language for a proposed ballot issue because of its title might have cleared a path for another proposal stuck in his office for years.
Both sides have asked the Ohio Supreme Court court to apply last week’s remedy in a case involving a proposed voters’ bill of rights to another proposal to eliminate qualified immunity for police officers and other governmental employees.
The court had unanimously found that Mr. Yost had no authority to judge a petition summary’s title, something his office admitted was relatively new.
The sides have agreed that the court should order Mr. Yost to review within 10 days the summary that backers of the qualified immunity proposal would show to potential petition signers. He would decide whether to forward it on to the next stage of review before the Ohio Ballot Board.
The proposed constitutional amendment would allow those who feel their rights have been violated to sue police or other government workers for their actions in the line of duty. Their government employers could be liable for unlimited compensatory and noneconomic damages.
After missing the deadline to qualify for Tuesday’s election, the backers now face an early July deadline to make the November, 2025, general election ballot. They would have to gather more than 413,000 valid signatures of registered voters.
Mr. Yost’s office has repeatedly rejected variations of the summary language since 2020 as not being a “fair and truthful statement” of what the proposed amendment would do if approved by voters.
In a March submission, in addition to raising some objections to the summary’s text, Mr. Yost determined that the title, “Protecting Ohioans’ Constitutional Rights,” was misleading. The backers responded in its revised language by omitting the title altogether.
That led to another rejection in July and litigation in August.
Backers of the petition argued that nothing in state law requires a ballot issue summary to have a title. Any title that could ultimately appear on the ballot would be written by the secretary of state later in the process.
“The litany of incorrect and unfounded objections [the attorney general] has raised as grounds for rejecting [the petition backers’] various summaries suggests there are no circumstances under which [Mr. Yost] is willing to perform [his] statutory duty to certify [the backers’] properly prepared and duly submitted proposed amendment for placement on the ballot,” the lawsuit reads.
Mr. Yost’s counter-argument that he has the authority to judge the title was later rejected in the voting rights case.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year found that Mr. Yost’s multiple rejections imposed an “undue burden” on the petitioners’ rights and ordered him to forward the proposal onto the next step. But the full appeals court bench later overturned that ruling.
In the separate case before the state Supreme Court, a briefing schedule was set that would delay any decision for months. Both sides now want the court to set aside that schedule in favor of an immediate order resetting the 10-day clock for Mr. Yost review.
When he rejected the last submission based on the lack of a title, he reserved the right to still address “any additional defects or deficiencies that may exist.” So it’s possible that the result of a new review may lead to yet another revision of the language by the backers.
Since the voting rights and qualified immunity efforts never neared certification for Tuesday’s ballot, a single statewide question, Issue 1’s redistricting reform, greeted voters. It was defeated with 54 percent of the vote.
First Published November 7, 2024, 5:25 p.m.
