2024 States to Watch: Ohio

Ohio Supreme Court Election 

Justices of the Ohio Supreme Court are selected in partisan elections. Vacancies on the court are filled through appointment by the governor. The court’s seven seats were considered nonpartisan offices until 2020, when legislation was enacted that requires candidates to run with a partisan designation.  

Who’s running for the Ohio Supreme Court in 2024? 

Judge Lisa Forbes, a judge of Ohio’s Eighth District Court of Appeals, will face Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Dan Hawkins in the partisan general election on November 5. Forbes, a Democrat, and Hawkins, a Republican, are running to fill the remaining term for the seat currently held by Ohio Supreme Court Justice Joe Deters, who was appointed to the court in 2023. Deters, a Republican, is challenging his fellow incumbent Justice Melody Stewart, a Democrat, for a full six-year term on the court rather than running to fill the remainder of his own partial term. Democratic Justice Michael Donnelly is also running for another full term on the court, and will face Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas Judge Megan Shanahan, a Republican, in the November 5 general election.   

You can learn more about each of these candidates here.  

The Stakes

The Ohio Supreme Court is the court of last resort for all of the state’s civil and criminal matters and serves as a check on the state’s two other branches of government.  

Last summer, Ohio legislators passed a legislatively-referred proposed constitutional amendment that asked voters to change the threshold for passage of future proposed constitutional amendments to 60% instead of a simple majority of 50% plus one vote. The legislators sought to present the question to voters during a special August election in which the question would be the only item on the ballot. The legislators had passed the proposal and referred it to the Ohio Ballot Board to make efforts to amend the state’s constitution more difficult. This move was made in anticipation of another ballot proposal being promoted in Ohio that sought to ask voters to enshrine reproductive rights in the state’s constitution. Organizers were seeking to place the reproductive rights proposal on the ballot in the November 2023 general election, so Republicans rushed to place their own proposal to raise the threshold for a proposed amendment’s passage before voters in an August special election in an effort to stymie the passage of the reproductive rights proposal later that fall. Opponents filed challenges to the legislature’s effort to make sweeping changes to the state’s process for citizen-initiated constitutional amendments on such a short timeline, but the Republican-led majority on the Ohio Supreme Court allowed the state to hold the special election in August 2023. Voters rejected the proposal, and the threshold for passage of proposed constitutional amendments in Ohio remains at 50% plus one vote. 

A few weeks later, the court approved the language proposed by Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose to describe the reproductive rights initiative, including allowing the term “unborn child” to remain in the description over the objections of the initiative’s supporters, who argued that the term would inject ethical judgment into the question before voters. LaRose was an avowed opponent of the proposal. Despite these efforts from Republicans across Ohio to hinder or block the reproductive rights proposal, voters approved the amendment in November 2023 by a margin of 56% to 44%. The passage of the amendment forced the court to strike down and remand the state’s near-total abortion ban that had been stayed by a lower court since the previous year. That court recently affirmed the unconstitutionality of the ban in the wake of the amendment’s passage.  

Late last year, the court dismissed a series of lawsuits that had challenged the constitutionality of the state’s new legislative redistricting plan on the grounds that the plan’s maps were intentionally drawn to favor Republicans in violation of the state’s constitution. The complaint had initially been filed in 2021 and had been tied up in the courts for several years, allowing legislative and congressional maps that Democrats had argued diluted the strength of votes in liberal and minority communities across the state to remain in place for the 2022 elections. With the court’s ruling, these maps will remain in place until after the 2030 census. Frustrated by Republicans’ successful efforts to enact gerrymandered district maps for nearly the next decade, liberal and progressive groups launched an effort to create an independent citizens’ redistricting committee that would comprise ordinary Ohio citizens without political ties or interests who would be empowered to draw the state’s legislative and congressional district maps. Earlier this summer, proponents of the proposal collected the required number of signatures to place the proposed amendment before voters in November and submitted the proposal to the Ohio Ballot Board which approved the proposal. Then, LaRose drafted language for the proposal’s ballot description that supporters say is a patently false misrepresentation of the proposal’s effect and is intended to mislead voters. The proposal’s supporters filed a challenge to LaRose’s language, but the court approved the controversial language in a party-line ruling. As a result, the proposal will be described as “required to gerrymander the boundaries of state legislative and congressional districts” to produce “partisan outcomes”; “repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering”; and “eliminate the longstanding ability of Ohio citizens to hold their representatives accountable for establishing fair state legislative and congressional districts.” Additionally, the court approved the proposed title for the ballot initiative: “to create an appointed redistricting commission not elected by or subject to removal by the voters of the state.” In approving the language and title, the court appeared to ignore state law preventing ballot language from attempting to sway voters for or against the initiative being described. 

And in a decision so baffling it made international headlines, the court ruled in July along party lines that a restaurant patron could not bring a negligence cause of action against a restaurant that served him chicken advertised and sold as “boneless wings,” which nonetheless contained a piece of bone that punctured the man’s esophagus and caused an infection that required surgery and weeks of intensive care to treat. The court reasoned that restaurant patrons should expect chicken meat to contain pieces of bone because chickens have bones, and reasoned that boneless food is designated as such based on its cooking method rather than the perceived presence or absence of bones.  

In recent years, the Ohio Supreme Court interpreted state law to issue rulings that have made it more difficult for Ohioans to amend their constitution to make state law work for them. The court also routinely rules in favor of businesses and large corporations over the interests of everyday Ohio residents.

How You Can Get Involved

Ohio’s general election will be held on November 5, 2024. 

• Check your registration status here. 

• If you’re unable to go to the polls or want to vote by mail, you can find more information on absentee voting here. 

• You can also vote early in-person at your local board of elections office until November 3. Check your polling place or find your local board of elections office here. 

Make your plan to vote.  

• Make sure to vote your entire ballot, including the judicial races in the partisan section of the ballot!