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Federal Court: SB 47 Restrictions on Petition Circulation Unconstitutional

Key features of Senate Bill 47 “reform” violate First Amendment speech and associational rights of Ohioans, restrict free trade

Columbus, OH – A federal court enjoined the state from enforcing Senate Bill 47’s new limits on Ohioans’ Initiative and Referendum rights. Specifically, the Court held that Ohio’s new ban on Ohioans contracting with non-Ohioans to circulate initiative petitions violates Ohioans’ First Amendment Rights.

The ruling, made by Judge Watson of the Columbus division of the Southern District of Ohio, paves the way for Ohioans advancing the Workplace Freedom Amendment and other freedom-oriented ballot issues to resume association and contracts with professional out-of-state signature gatherers.

The legal action was filed on behalf of Ohioans for Workplace Freedom and Cincinnati for Pension Reform. OWF is currently gathering signatures to place a right-to-work amendment before voters; and CPR incurred significant additional last-minute costs attempting to utilize only in-state petitioners.

In his 27 page decision, Judge Watson, explained that “petition circulation – whether for candidates or issues – constitutes core political speech protected by the First Amendment,” and “laws prohibiting nonresidents from acting as petition circulators significantly burden political speech because they substantially reduce the number of petition circulators and are therefore subject to strict scrutiny.”

The Order concluded as follows: “The Court holds that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that R.C. 3503.06(C)(1)(a) violates the First Amendment because it substantially burdens core political speech and is not narrowly tailored to serve Ohio’s compelling interest in curbing fraud in the election process.”

The lawsuit sought to restore Ohioans freedom to contract or associate with any and all American citizens to convey their message and advance their issue to the ballot. The lawsuit further seeks to invalidate the prohibition, applicable only to those associated with the issue, on gathering signatures during certain critical periods.

“We’re grateful for the Court’s thorough ruling. This Act is a set of back-door tactics to effectively eliminate initiative and referendum in Ohio, by eliminating many of those who do the actual work of gathering signatures on important issues” said Maurice Thompson, Executive Director of the 1851 Center.

“Initiative and referendum supply an important check on arbitrary government, and also supply citizens with the opportunity to act as civic adults – – taking the lawmaking power into their own hands rather than begging the legislature for change.”

The only attempt at using exclusively in-state circulators since the new statute’s enactment, a referendum effort on behalf of internet sweepstakes businesses, had failed dramatically, with less than 37 percent of submitted signatures found to be valid.

Read the Court’s Order Granting Ohioans for Workplace Freedom’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction HERE.

March 16, 2015: Columbus Dispatch: Judge finds Husted liable for enforcing unconstitutional law

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U.S. Supreme Court Petitioned to Review Ohio PAC Laws

1851 Center asks United States Supreme Court to review Ohio Political Action Committee regulations on behalf of Geauga County blogger’s First Amendment rights

Columbus, OH – The 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, in cooperation with the Washington D.C.-based Center for Competitive Politics, late yesterday petitioned the United States Supreme Court to weigh in on the nation’s strictest Political Action Committee regulations.

The legal action is filed on behalf of Edmund Corsi, a Cleveland-area blogger who faces prosecution after blogging about state and local political issues, authoring a pamphlet critical of local politicians, and hosting an informal political discussion group. The state contends that Ohio’s PAC laws required Mr. Corsi and others, known as “Geauga Constitutional Council,” to first register with the state and hire a treasurer, and then disclose his home address on his pamphlet and blog, and that by failing to do so, Corsi is subject to criminal penalties and civil fines. Mr. Corsi was referred for prosecution by one of the politicians he criticized – – Geauga County Republican Party chairman Edward Ryder.

The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly confirmed that political speech, even when through group association, in pamphlets or on the internet, is afforded the greatest constitutional protection.

The Court has already once struck down Ohio’s Political Action Committee regulation, in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission in 1995. There, the Court chastised the Ohio Supreme Court and the OEC for upholding the regulations after state officials attempted to prosecute a senior citizen for failing to include a “disclaimer” on her homemade flyer advocating against a local tax increase.

Nevertheless, the Ohio Elections Commission maintains that the re-written regulations still require groups of two or more Ohioans who communicate political thoughts to first register as a Political Action Committee, and thereby submit to reporting, disclaimer, and disclosure requirements. Ohio Courts applied no scrutiny to the OEC, and the Ohio Supreme Court voted 4-3 to sidestep the issue.

This case presents the first opportunity for a federal court to analyze application of the re-written PAC regulations, as well as the first opportunity to consider the effect of the Court’s landmark Citizens United decision on Ohio’s campaign finance regulations.

The Petition for Certiorari presents the following legal questions to the Court:

  1. May the major purpose test for political committee status, established by this Court in Buckley v. Valeo and FEC v. Mass. Citizens for Life, be satisfied without finding that regulated activity comprises the majority of an organization’s activity or expenditures?
  1. May a state meet its burden of demonstrating an organization’s major purpose without determining the portion of its expenditures directed toward political communications?

In addressing these issues, the Petition explains:

  • The costs of complying with the PAC regulations, which includes reporting and disclaimer requirements, administrative burdens, the hiring of a treasurer, and the loss of privacy and anonymity of those who speak out by effectively requiring the disclose of the author’s name and home address on government filing, has the effect of silencing protected speech.
  • The Ohio Elections Commission members improperly guess at the “primary or major purpose” of the group, without considering whether they have spent money on politics, how much money, or other non-campaign-related activities.
  • In involuntarily committing groups of citizens not primarily engaged in elections as PACs, the OEC improperly overanalyzes isolated Facebook and blogs posts and informal “mission statements.”

“Ohio’s PAC regulations have long been considered the most oppressive in the nation, and the Ohio Elections Commission’s application of those regulations has rightfully been the source of national criticism” said Maurice Thompson, Executive Director of the 1851 Center. “Meanwhile, Ohio courts, including our highest court, continue to make high-profile mistakes and oversights on basic First Amendment doctrine, requiring Ohioans to look to federal courts to protect their rights. The First Amendment does not allow politically-appointed OEC bureaucrats and political opponents to use PAC regulations to silence the speech of those who criticize government, using the loss of privacy and expensive reporting requirements of PAC regulations as leverage to intimidate and threaten those expressing differing views, as has been done here.”

Thompson added, “While many Americans fret over government permitting speech by ‘super-PACs,’ they should be more concerned about shocking amount of everyday grass-roots political speech that Ohio is forcing into PAC status – from lawn signs to Facebook pages – and thus essentially prohibiting, at the very same time.”

The case is particularly significant for opponents of local tax levies and “tea party” groups, many of whom are likely to be characterized as Political Action Committees, if the Ohio Election Commission’s ruling is not eventually overturned.


Read The Geauga Constitutional Council’s Petition for Certiorari here.


September 10, 2013: The Plain Dealer: Edmund Corsi’s political blog and activism that triggered Ohio election complaint now sits before U.S. Supreme Court

September 6, 2013: Wall Street Journal: Bradley Smith: The Supreme Court and Ed Corsi’s Life of Political Crime

July 11, 2013: Forbes: In Today’s America, Consult Your Attorney Before Speaking Freely

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High Court Will Determine Ohioans Right to Challenge JobsOhio

1851 Center argues that state taxpayers maintain standing to challenge the constitutionality of Corporate Welfare

Columbus, OH – The Supreme Court of Ohio heard arguments on January 23 to determine the extent to which Ohioans may take legal action to force state government to comply with constitutional spending, indebtedness, and corporate welfare constraints.

The 1851 Center for Constitutional Law has spearheaded the litigation, briefing and arguing the merits of the position that the Ohio Constitution demands broad access to the courts for taxpayers seeking to enforce the Ohio Constitution’s structural restraints on government. The Center had originally submitted to the Ohio Supreme Court a “friend of the court” brief asserting that Progress Ohio and other left-wing challengers must be found to have taxpayer and “public interest” standing to challenge the constitutionality of Governor Kasich’s JobsOhio legislation.

The 1851 Center asserts that if Ohio’s high court gives a pass to lower court rulings that Progress Ohio does not possess standing in this case, the Court will essentially bar all Ohioans from enforcing the Ohio Constitution’s stringent spending, debt, and “anti-corporate-welfare” provisions, effectively rending these provisions unenforceable.

The JobsOhio legislation sets up a special public-private corporation to invest public funds in select private corporations without transparency. The challengers contend (1) these features violate the Ohio Constitution’s prohibitions on corporate welfare and state spending and indebtedness (contained in Articles 8 and 13); and (2) the General Assembly has unconstitutionally attempted to insulate JobsOhio from judicial scrutiny by including a provision that essentially prohibits any legal actions from being brought to challenge it.

Lower courts refused to consider these serious constitutional claims, flippantly concluding that Progress Ohio has no standing (the right to sue in Court) because it does not have a sufficiently “personal stake” in enforcement of the state constitution; and further because enforcement of the constitution’s spending, debt, and corporate welfare limits are not a sufficiently important public interest to warrant an exemption from this personal stake requirement.

The 1851 Center’s initial brief, which takes no position on the substantive issue – – the constitutionality of JobsOhio – – asserts the following:

  • The Ohio Constitution demands that citizens and taxpayers maintain standing to enforce limits on tax, spending, and indebtedness legislation.
  • The lower courts in this case erred in relying on federal standing cases, which are centered on Article III of the federal constitution, because the language of the Ohio Constitution deliberately rejects such barriers to standing in Ohio, and contains no jurisdictional prohibition on taxpayers and citizens bringing public interest actions.
  • Enforcing well-defined constitutional limits on state spending, indebtedness, and governmental conferral of special corporate privilege is “of great importance and interest to the public.”
  • Ohioans’ stake in enforcement of their constitution is sufficiently personal to maintain standing to enforce constitutional limits on state government’s spending, indebtedness, and provision of special corporate privileges.
  • If Ohioans are required to have a “personal stake” in such actions beyond their role as citizens and taxpayers, as the lower courts require in this case, then no Ohioan will have the capacity to enforce these general spending, debt and corporate welfare limits, and Courts will have rendered those provisions effectively unenforceable.

“While we may not agree with Progress Ohio’s politics, we certainly believe that they, like all Ohioans, must have standing to defend the Ohio Constitution in court, if that document is to remain enforceable,” said Maurice Thompson, Executive Director of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law. “By requiring a ‘personal stake’ in a matter upon which all Ohioans are harmed relatively equally, such as state spending, indebtedness, and corporate welfare, Ohio courts are pulling the rug out from under these key constitutional limitations on government, and placing their own preference for abstaining from the hard work of enforcing the constitution above them. Such decisions cannot stand, if these important limits on government are to be enforceable going forward.”

Continued Thompson, “The Ohio Supreme Court’s decision in this case needs to acknowledge that when courts strip Ohioans’ of the right to enforce constitutional limits on government in court, they essentially redact those constitutional limits through procedural artifice. Ohio judges should enforce, not redact, the Ohio Constitution”

Read the 1851 Center’s initial Brief in this case HERE.

November 7, 2013: Columbus Dispatch: Supreme Court to decide who has the right to sue JobsOhio

November 6, 2013: WKSU NPR 89.7: Ohio Supreme Court hears first round of arguments in JobsOhio [AUDIO]

November 6, 2013: NBC 4: Foes Of Ohio Job-Creation Board Seek Right To Sue [VIDEO]

March 15, 2013: Ohio Watchdog: Court rejects basis for democracy in JobsOhio case

March 11, 2013: WBNS-10TV: Ohio Auditor Asks To See The Books For JobsOhio [VIDEO]

March 8, 2013: The Plain Dealer: Auditor’s authority to check JobsOhio books sparks dispute with Gov. John Kasich

February 26, 2013: Ohio Christian Alliance: The Important Issue of Judicial Standing with Maurice Thompson of the 1851 Law Center [AUDIO]

February 17, 2013: Dayton Daily News: ‘Activist’ Kasich getting mixed reviews

February 5, 2013: The Lima News: Editorial: JobsOhio delays irk Kasich

February 3, 2013: The Repository: Genesis of proposal doesn’t bode well for coming debate

January 31, 2013: Columbus Dispatch: Kasich says critics will answer to God

January 31, 2013: Media Trackers Ohio: Governor Kasich Blasts Conservative, Liberal Foes of JobsOhio as “Nihilists”

January 31, 2013: Columbus Business First: Kasich: JobsOhio foes threaten ‘wrecking’ state’s economy

January 31, 2013: Cincinnati.com: Kasich blasts supporters of JobsOhio lawsuit

January 23, 2013: Houston Chronicle: High court to decide group’s right to sue JobsOhio

January 23, 2013: Columbus Dispatch: State justices to assess legality of JobsOhio suit

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Ohioans Submit Brief to U.S. Supreme Court Challenging Constitutionality of Individual Mandate

The 1851 Center for Constitutional Law has submitted to the United States Supreme Court a “friend of the court” brief asserting that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate is unconstitutional.  The brief highlights for the High Court Ohioans’ placement of the Ohio Health Care Freedom Amendment (“Issue 3”) in Ohio’s Bill of Rights, and its role in the Court’s analysis of whether the mandate withstands constitutional scrutiny.

The individual health insurance mandate, described as a “minimum essential coverage requirement” in the PPACA, attempts to require each citizen of the United States to purchase a qualifying heath insurance policy that, thus far, must cover items ranging from substance abuse and mental health coverage to maternity care.  Through requiring these coverages and others, the mandate is expected to drive up costs of health insurance premiums nationwide.

The 1851 Center’s Brief recognizes that because the mandate is not a regulation of commerce, per se, it must be “necessary and proper” for carrying into execution Congressional Commerce Clause power.  The Brief then chronicles legal principles and factual background demonstrating that, in light of efforts in Ohio and elsewhere, the mandate is not “proper,” as the Court has historically understood that term.

Specifically, the brief asserts:

  • The Constitution is animated by federalism, and because its purpose is to protect liberty, the mandate violates the “letter and spirit” of the constitution, insofar as it may displace state protection of a fundamental right.
  • Freedom from compulsion to purchase government-defined health insurance is the type of liberty states must be permitted to protect.
  • The Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments protect, from Necessary and Proper Clause power, rights specifically enumerated under state law.
  • The Necessary and Proper Clause has never before been used to displace a state constitutional provision protecting liberty.
  • The mandate forces 49 states to adhere to a policy only heretofore adopted by Massachusetts, even though that policy has been vigorously debated in each state.
  • States may protect liberty above and beyond the baseline protections afforded by the federal Constitution.

Ohio is one of three states with constitutional prohibitions against forced purchase of health care insurance.  Ten other states maintain statutory prohibitions, and 36 of the remaining 39 states have deliberately abstained from enacting individual health insurance mandates, despite debate over the policy since California first proposed such a mandate in 1939.

The Ohio Amendment, approved by 66 percent of the vote, over 2.2 million voters, added a 21st Section Ohio’s Bill of Rights “to preserve the freedom of Ohioans to choose their health care and health care coverage.”  In approving the amendments Ohioans specifically found “The freedom to not be forced to purchase government-defined private health insurance is a fundamental right.”

“One of the purposes of enacting the Health Care Freedom Amendment was not only protect Ohioans’ health care freedom from state and local government, but also to place Ohioans in the nation’s strongest position to challenge invasive elements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” said Maurice Thompson, Executive Director of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law.

“The 1851 Center’s Brief is a reminder, like the Ohio Health Care Freedom Amendment, of our view, and the founders’ view, that government exists to secure rights, rather than to take from some so as to provide benefits, amenities, and comfort to others,” added Thompson.  “We thought it important to share this view with the Court, along with a reminder of the impropriety of the federal government eradicating rights that the states have essentially ‘federalized’ through the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments, as it decides the extent of our liberties.”

The Ohio Health Care Freedom Amendment was drafted, initiated, and defended by the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law.

Read the Amicus Brief here.

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Update: Estate Tax Repeal Signed into Law, Expires January 1, 2013

The legislature has passed a state budget that includes the repeal of Ohio’s Estate Tax.  Special thanks to the team at http://www.endohioestatetax.com/ for their leadership in accomplishing a feat that no liberty group before them had accomplished:  the elimination of a statewide tax.  In drafting the initiative and representing the effort, the 1851 Center was simply the professional scaffolding around this inspiring all-volunteer effort. Read more