A federal court ordered Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on Wednesday to stop blocking a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would end qualified immunity. Yost intends to appeal.

Qualified immunity refers to the longstanding legal doctrine of granting broad immunity from criminal and civil liability to public servants, including police officers. The proposed amendment, titled Protecting Ohioans’ Constitutional Rights, is backed by the Ohio Coalition to End Qualified Immunity (OCEQI).

Getting a proposed amendment on the ballot is a long process, and OCEQI has been stuck in one of the stages — securing approval from the Ohio Attorney General for the amendment’s summary language — since last year.

The summary is what supporters of an amendment show to people when they’re gathering signatures on petitions, another step in the process. State law requires that the summary be a “fair and truthful statement” about the effects of the proposed changes to the constitution. The law also gives the attorney general sole discretion to determine that.

Yost has rejected OCEQI’s summary eight times. After the latest rejection, in March, attorney Mark Brown, a professor at Capital University Law School, got involved and took the case to the Ohio Supreme Court. He asked the court to expedite, or fast track, the case because petition signatures are due July 3. But the court declined.

Turning to federal courts

Brown then turned to the federal courts. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio declined Brown’s request to order Yost to certify the summary. But Brown’s appeal to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals was successful. A three-judge panel voted 2-1 to order Yost to move the amendment summary to the next step in the process, a review by the Ohio Ballot Board.

The judges did not comment on Yost’s reasons for rejecting the summary. Their ruling focused on the calendar.

State law demands that amendment backers complete the first seven steps of the process no later than 125 days before the election, the judges wrote. But the Ohio Supreme Court only expedites cases related to elections within 90 days of an election. Therefore, cases like OCEQI’s “will never have any guarantee of judicial review in advance of any upcoming election deadlines.”

That matters because OCEQI only has until July 3 to submit more than 440,000 petition signatures from registered voters — from at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties — to get the amendment on the ballot. And they can’t even begin collecting signatures until the summary is approved and the ballot board completes its review, which can take up to 10 days.

The ballot board’s role is to “evaluate the petition to ensure that it contains only one constitutional amendment,” according to the Ohio Secretary of State’s web site.

Yost will appeal

Yost will ask the entire Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to review and overrule the decision by the three-judge panel, according to a spokesperson, Bethany McCorkle.

“The Attorney General’s duty is to decide if the summary presented with initiative petitions is ‘fair and truthful,’” McCorkle wrote in a statement. “General Yost determined it was not, and pointed out that the appeals court never decided whether his decision was correct.

“If Attorney General Yost’s decision was correct, then the panel’s order is sending an unfair, untruthful summary out to present to voters.”

McCorkle also stated that this week’s ruling contained “several errors in legal reasoning,” but she did not elaborate.

Cynthia Brown, founder and committee chair of OCEQI, said she and the coalition partners have a plan in place to begin gathering petition signatures as soon as the ballot board completes its review. Anyone who wants to volunteer can sign up at the organization’s web site.

“We’re making history here,” she said.