2025 Year in Review

The Ohio Fair Courts Alliance started and finished strong in 2025! We hosted three civic education forums with over 325 attendees on timely crucial topics. First, in March we celebrated Sunshine Week and shined a light on the need for greater government transparency and shared how to make a public records request. You can view the recording here.

Our second event focused on the threats to due process, the rule of law, and the US Constitution. Civil rights experts Subodh Chandra and Omar Noureldin explored recent violations, highlighted pivotal court cases, and talked about what we can do in this unprecedented moment. You can view the recording here.

Lastly, as wealthy special interests have been urging state legislators to call for a new constitutional convention, we gathered a group of distinguished panelists who unpacked the threats of an Article V Convention of States and provided ways for us in Ohio to push back. You can view the recording here.

We then took the opportunity to raise awareness about the importance of voting in judicial elections with an extensive get-out-the-vote campaign for the 2025 municipal court races via a social media campaign, a blog post. Check out this interview with Cleveland VOTES on the importance of judicial elections. 

Our educational outreach didn’t stop there. For example, we produced a video featuring dark money expert Lisa Graves for the 15th anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s controversial 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision declaring that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited money on elections. The decision allowed for massive amounts of secret spending by corporations and billionaire-funded Super PACs in U.S. elections, including here in Ohio. We’ve seen dark money organizations play an outsized role in Ohio politics with ad spending in the Ohio Supreme Court elections.

We also kept a watch on the Ohio Supreme Court. The Columbus Dispatch published a powerful op-ed by the Ohio Fair Courts Alliance’s Program Manager about the Court’s ruling that that “nitrogen gas is not ‘toxic’ and is not a ‘poison’ as those terms are commonly understood.” The court’s ruling determined that a widow was not able to obtain additional death benefits. Her husband, Kenneth Ray Jr., a security guard at TimkenSteel Corporation, died of asphyxiation seconds after entering a room in a plant that had accidentally filled with nitrogen gas. 

Additionally, we are so pleased that the state legislature passed two bills to improve policing: Senate Bill 114 which prohibits quotas for arrest and citations and House Bill 548 which requires alcohol and drug testing of officers involved in use of force incidents. The Ohio Fair Courts Alliance is a proud member of the Ohio Police Reform Policy Table. We also made some new friends along the way, signing on as a partner of the Columbus Safety Collective Campaign.

We’re all set to fight for fair courts in 2026! Get ready to hear all about this year’s Ohio Supreme Court election with get-out-the-vote and educational webinars. 

To help you feel prepared when casting your ballot, we are relaunching our Judge the Ads website. This site will highlight dark money ad spending in Ohio Supreme Court races. To provide some context for the upcoming election and the challenge of “following the money, we will release a report examining dark money in the 2024 race for Ohio Supreme Court.

In addition, we will continue the fight to end the death penalty in Ohio. It’s biased, costly, and riddled with wrongful convictions. “It’s a death lottery,” said former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer. Twenty-three states have abolished capital punishment; Ohio can be the 24th! Check out ways to get involved with the No Death Penalty Ohio campaign here.

New this year will be tracking the upcoming court cases involving former FirstEnergy executives as well as former Speaker of the House Larry Householder’s state trial. More than five years after Householder’s arrest, more details are emerging in the largest corruption scheme in Ohio history and court battles continue. This information, along with other developments, will be on Common Cause Ohio’s “A Cycle of Corruption” timeline for the public to view.

Lastly, as always, you can count on us to provide education and vital information on the importance of judicial integrity, voting for judges, the positive impact of improved disclosure and recusal rules, criminal justice reform, and the crucial need for a fair judicial system.

We welcome any comments or questions you may have. You can contact us at ohiofaircourts@gmail.com. We’re on X, Bluesky, and Instagram at @ohfaircourts - feel free to give us a follow!