Yost, a Republican, had rejected the amendment’s language eight times, prompting a lawsuit from three Ohio voters represented by Capital University professor Mark Brown. U.S. District Court Judge James Graham ruled against Yost, finding his rejections overly technical. The Supreme Court’s denial upholds that decision, though Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh dissented, indicating they would have reviewed the case.
The decision clears the way for the amendment to proceed to the Ohio Ballot Board, which will review its language to determine if it should appear as one or multiple ballot issues. Proponents must then collect 413,487 valid signatures to place the measure on the statewide ballot.
The ruling could limit the attorney general’s authority to reject proposed constitutional amendment language, potentially easing the path for future ballot initiatives in Ohio. The Ohio Ballot Board previously approved a modified version of the measure in December 2024, but proponents aim to move forward with their original language.
Unless I read it wrong, Ohioans are planning to propose a state constitution amendment to end police qualified immunity. This rolling says, yeah you can do that. It still needs to get on the ballot and be voted on before anything changes.
Who is on the side of ending qualified immunity: pretty much anyone who isn’t a cop or authoritarian. QI is basically legal armor for cops to do anything they want as long as it can be read as (waves hands) “following protocol”.
As much as the votes on reproductive rights and cannabis gave me hope, the legislature’s responses on both left me cold, as some of these scumbags are not above ignoring the will of the electorate, and with the way the winds are blowing now, I’d not put it past them to move forward now to do just that.
I think there’s potential of the issue passing—as with the aforementioned reproductive rights and cannabis measures—but I fully expect a ballot issue on abolishing QI to meet a whole bunch of rigging and disenfranchisement fuckery, plus I fear that people may be intimidated or otherwise discouraged from voting altogether.