Amendment advocates sue Ohio AG, claiming he is thwarting their proposals

COLUMBUS — Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost is for a second time at the center of litigation accusing him of stalling citizen efforts to put proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot.

Last week the Ohio Supreme Court refused to expedite, as a time-sensitive election case, its consideration of a lawsuit accusing Mr. Yost of throwing obstacles in the path of a plan to ask voters to do away with qualified immunity for state and local governments, their police officers, and other employees stemming from job-related actions.

The attorney general has rejected proposed petition summary language for this specific amendment five times over the last year and previous iterations before that.

In February, proponents of a proposed voters' bill of rights also sued, accusing the Republican attorney general of stonewalling, cutting into the time that petitioners have to gather about 413,000 valid voter signatures in time to qualify for the Nov. 5 general-election ballot.

In both cases, the high court agreed not to fast-track the litigation.

"The statewide initiative process is demanding and daunting," attorneys for Ohio Coalition to End Qualified Immunity said in urging the court to expedite the case. "It takes significant time and substantial resources.

"Delays on the front end will necessarily affect the back end," they wrote. "The clock, so to speak, will run out if [Mr. Yost] is not directed to perform his statutory duty in a timely manner.”

Anyone hoping to be certified for the general election must file their petitions by July 3. There are already two sets of petitions in the field seeking signatures: one to raise Ohio’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, the other to remove politicians from congressional and state legislative redistricting.

The first key threshold that must be cleared before petition circulators can hit the streets is the attorney general’s certification that proposed summary language that would-be petition signers would see accurately reflects what the amendment would do. The attorney general has 10 days to render judgment after language submission.

In the case of both pending petitions, Mr. Yost has opined they do not meet that standard, and in a relatively new procedure, he has begun rejecting them because of their titles.

Mr. Yost's office successfully argued that the high court should not fast-track either case, in part because there is nothing preventing these questions from appearing on subsequent general-election ballots should they miss 2024.

"The importance of the attorney general’s scope and authority to ensure that the summaries provided to voters are fair and truthful cannot be understated," his office's brief read. "This court should deny the [coalition's] attempt to expedite the litigation over the attorney general’s ability to ensure that voters receive fair and truthful summaries of proposed constitutional amendments."

The 2024 general election, however, is expected to have above-average turnout because of the presidential election.

Both lawsuits take aim at Mr. Yost's rejection of the amendments’ titles, something his office has conceded is relatively new and is based on a state Supreme Court ruling.

He has objected to amendment backers’ use of titles to advocate for their positions.

The voting-rights proposal would lock some existing rights into the Ohio Constitution, expand on others, and block government from interfering.

Some of it is a backlash to legislation that imposed tight photo identification requirements for in-person voting, shortened time periods for returning absentee ballots and curing provisional ballots, and eliminated the Monday before Election Day from the in-person early voting calendar.

The amendment curtailing qualified immunity could allow people who feel police officers’ actions, or those of other public employees, infringed their constitutional rights to sue. Their government employers could be liable for unlimited compensatory and noneconomic damages.

"Regrettably, the petitioners have submitted summaries that repeat the misstatements and/or omissions that I have specifically identified in previously rejected summaries," Mr. Yost wrote in his letter explaining his latest rejection.

As for the title, he wrote that the use of the word "protect" is subjective when its true purpose is to "abrogate" the defenses of government.

Both lawsuits will proceed at the normal pace of litigation, which could take months. With each passing day it will become tougher for either question to meet the July 3 deadline.