Ohio’s attorney general must approve a desired summary of a ballot measure that would make it easier to sue police and government officials, a federal judge ruled Friday.
The enforcement by Attorney General Dave Yost (R) enforcement of a law that says summaries of proposed constitutional amendments must be “fair and truthful” likely violated the Ohio Coalition to End Qualified Immunity’s free-speech rights, Senior Judge James L. Graham of the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio said.
The judge’s preliminary injunction ordered Yost to immediately submit the disputed summary to the Ohio Ballot Board for review, the next step before the group can collect the signatures necessary to place its measure on this year’s ballot. The burdens imposed Yost’s enforcement of the law, which includes eight summary rejections, don’t justify the imposition on the group’s free-speech rights, Graham said.
“As applied, the Attorney General’s denials of plaintiffs’ summaries reached a level of hypercorrectness which went beyond ensuring that citizens could ascertain what they were being asked to support,” Graham wrote, adding that Yost “has played the role of an antagonistic copyeditor, striking plaintiffs’ work on technical grounds.”…