Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima, during the Ohio Senate session, February 28, 2024, at the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original article.)
The groups seeking to eliminate a private school voucher program in Ohio have backed off of an effort to get the state’s Senate president to speak on the matter.
Attorneys for Ohio public school districts and anti-voucher coalitions notified the Franklin County Common Pleas Court that they had withdrawn a subpoena for Senate President Matt Huffman, and cancelled a written deposition planned for the legislative leader.
Attorney Mark Wallach of the Cleveland law firm McCarthy, Lebit, Crystal & Liffman Co., who represented the public school groups and districts in court documents, did not give any further reasoning behind the withdrawal in his notification to the court.
William Phillis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding, one of the parties in the lawsuit, said after attorneys reviewed the data and documents provided through the discovery process, they concluded “whatever else (Huffman) had to say wouldn’t affect our case.”
“Our case is strong without Huffman’s huffing and puffing,” Phillis told the Ohio Capital Journal.
Phillis also said the groups fighting against the private school vouchers in the lawsuit were trying to avoid dragging the case on longer than necessary, especially with pro-public school parties feeling like it will end in their favor.
“The more we get into this, the more confident we are that we can demonstrate to the court that this is an unconstitutional tactic,” Phillis said. “How could it not be?”
The attorneys also filed a motion to dismiss the Ohio Supreme Court case in which Huffman appealed lower court decisions that would have compelled his written deposition, and allowed the deposition of other individuals related to the case. The motion to dismiss was filed because the “appeal is moot” now that the subpoena has been withdrawn, according to court documents.
Wallach cited the approaching end of the nearly three-year litigation as the reason the appeal was no longer needed.
“The discovery deadline has passed, summary judgment motions are pending and trial is scheduled for this November — in less than three months,” Wallach wrote. “Consequently, dismissal is appropriate because there is no controversy left to decide between the parties to this appeal.”
Huffman has fought the deposition since March 2023, when it was first produced by the groups which say the private school voucher program is hindering the state’s ability to maintain a “thorough and efficient” system of public schools, as dictated by the Ohio Constitution.
The subpoena asked Huffman to answer questions “on his knowledge of school funding in Ohio and his involvement in the enactment and expansion of the EdChoice program.”
The senate president consistently cited constitutional protection given by the Speech and Debate Clause, under which legislators are provided “testimonial privilege protecting legislators from judicially-compelled questioning,” according to court documents, and that says legislators “shall not be questioned elsewhere” about issues that are spoken about or debated in the Senate or the House during a General Assembly session, according to the clause of the constitution cited by Huffman’s attorneys.
Huffman said overruling the Speech and Debate Clause and allowing the deposition could have a “far-reaching chilling effect on Ohio’s legislators.” Even if he was allowed to be questioned, Huffman argued, his beliefs and opinions on EdChoice “are not relevant.”
A trial court ruled that Huffman did not need to submit to an oral deposition, but instead needed to answer written questions from voucher challengers. Ohio’s Tenth District Court of Appeals dismissed Huffman’s appeal of the order, leading him to appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court , asking the state’s highest court to release him from the court order, citing the same legislative privilege under which he argued he was protected in previous appeals. The Ohio Supreme Court accepted the appeal in July.
The Franklin County case is set to go to trial on Nov. 4.
A spokesperson for Huffman did not have a comment on the case development.
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