Ohio鈥檚 seven Supreme Court justices spent much of the year working from home, returning to in-person arguments in the Ohio Judicial Center . And that was just one highlight in a big year.
In January, Republican Chief Justice Maureen O鈥機onnor administered the oath of office to Democratic former Secretary of State and appeals court judge Jennifer Brunner in January. Brunner鈥檚 defeat of Republican Justice Judi French, who鈥檇 been on the court since 2013, put three Democrats on the Court for the first time since 1994. Three years before, all seven justices were Republicans.
By June, Brunner had announced she would run for O鈥機onnor鈥檚 position, since state law bans justices over 70 from running for re-election. Brunner could be the first Democratic Chief Justice in 40 years.
Brunner will face Justice Sharon Kennedy, who also ran for re-election in 2020, after fellow Republican Justice Pat DeWine decided not to run against Kennedy.
They鈥檒l run with party labels on the ballot next year, with a bill signed in June.
Democrats including Rep. Stephanie Howse (D-Cleveland) opposed that, while noting Democrats have won three seats in the last two Ohio Supreme Court elections.
鈥淪o let鈥檚 just be real. Be a straight shooter. Y鈥檃ll scared. It鈥檚 cool. Because Democrats are absolutely coming for the Ohio Supreme Court in 鈥�22,鈥� Howse said in debate on the House floor in June.
But Republican sponsors said Ohio is only state that requires judges to run in partisan primaries and then in alleged non-partisan general elections.
O鈥機onnor has spent a lot of her final term working on and speaking about reforming the cash bail system.
In March, the Court announced that Ohio鈥檚 28 counties with both multiple municipal courts and county courts must use a uniform bail schedule starting in July. And O鈥機onnor said the first option must be releasing people on personal recognizance bonds.
鈥淭he only time that you would determine that pre-trial detention would be appropriate would be if there was a risk of flight, or there was a danger of harm to the community, the witnesses, maybe a victim, that sort of thing," O'Connor said in March.
While conservative and liberal groups have pushed for bail system changes, Kennedy and DeWine disagreed with this order, saying they didn鈥檛 feel the court had the authority.
One of the court鈥檚 biggest decisions was in June, when the justices split sharply over the Madison Local School District鈥檚 policy of allowing 10 teachers and school staff to be armed with just 24 hours of training, after a 2014 shooting at Madison Junior/Senior High school left four people injured.
, Rachel Bloomekatz represented the parents who sued the southwestern Ohio district, saying more than 700 hours are required by state law.
鈥淭he board authorized here less training than a Little League umpire, less training than a nail technician in Ohio,鈥� Bloomekatz said.
The court ruled 4-3 in favor of the parents.
But the case had already sparked a bill to lower the state鈥檚 required training to 20 hours. It鈥檚 sponsored by Rep. Thomas Hall (R-Middletown), whose father was a resource officer at the school when that shooting happened.
In October, the Court also settled the longstanding challenge over what was Ohio鈥檚 largest online charter school and its outstanding bill to the state.
The court ruled the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow or ECOT, closed since 2018, has to pay back $60 million it got for inflated student enrollment numbers. The state鈥檚 Eric Clark said lawmakers were clear that the Ohio Department of Education had the authority to issue that final notice.
鈥淭he General Assembly could have said 鈥榝inal and appealable,鈥� as it has on other occasions, and it did not do that," Clark .
Also in October, the court ordered FirstEnergy to pay back customers more than $306 million, saying the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio didn't do enough to make sure the company would abide by corporate separation policies. The average ratepayer of Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company, Ohio Edison and Toledo Edison will get about $85 back over the course of five years.
The court ruled in November that after a driver was injured after hitting their mailbox, which they鈥檇 built from a steel pipe and cement after vandals kept attacking it. The driver was paralyzed after his truck slid on ice, hit the mailbox and flipped over, but the court said the mailbox wasn鈥檛 a threat to motorists on the road.
Cleveland drivers who leased cars or were driving employer-owned vehicles and got traffic camera tickets want to get back nearly $6 million in fines and interest racked up between 2005 and 2009. The cameras went dark in 2014. A class action sued argued in September challenged that those penalties were a foregone conclusion and impossible to overturn, but Cleveland鈥檚 lawyer said they broke the law and admitted it by paying the fines. Those drivers are waiting for a decision.
Some 200,000 Ohioans who had been receiving $300 weekly unemployment checks earlier this year are waiting for arguments before the court in their case, which claims Gov. Mike DeWine didn鈥檛 have the power to cut off those checks in June when the federal program wasn鈥檛 to end till September.
And Ohioans are also waiting on rulings on the maps drawn this year for the Ohio House and Senate and for Congress.
Chief Justice O鈥機onnor is considered a crucial vote, since she voted to throw out maps drawn in 2011, though the majority upheld them.
Republicans have argued that Justice Brunner should recuse herself because she talked about redistricting in her 2020 campaign, but haven鈥檛 addressed the decision by Justice DeWine not to recuse himself in the case that did directly involving his father, Gov. DeWine, a member of the commission that approved those maps 鈥� but the Court removed Gov. DeWine from the Congressional map case in December.
