PRESS RELEASE: 1851 Center For Constitutional Law

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 4, 2013
MEDIA CONTACT
Maurice A . Thompson
MThompson@OhioConstitution.org
(614) 340-9817

Supreme Court Argument Wednesday: Can Ohioans Stop "JobsOhio" in Court?   1851 Center will argue that state taxpayers maintain standing to challenge the constitutionality of corporate welfare Columbus, OH - On Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court of Ohio will hear oral arguments on the extent to which Ohioans may take legal action to force state government to comply with the Ohio constitution's spending, indebtedness, cronyism, and corporate welfare constraints. The 1851 Center asserts that if Ohio's high court gives a pass to lower court rulings that Progress Ohio does not possess standing in this case, the Court will essentially bar all Ohioans from enforcing the Ohio Constitution's stringent spending, debt, and anti-corporate-welfare and cronyism provisions, effectively rending these provisions unenforceable. Watch the oral argument live, beginning at approximately 10:00am on Wednesday November 6, HERE.  The Ohio Supreme Court preview the argument HERE. Read the briefs HERE. The JobsOhio legislation sets up a special public-private corporation to invest public funds in select private corporations without transparency. The challengers contend (1) these features violate the Ohio Constitution's prohibitions on corporate welfare and state spending and indebtedness (contained in Articles 8 and 13); and (2) the General Assembly has unconstitutionally attempted to insulate JobsOhio from judicial scrutiny by including a provision that essentially prohibits any legal actions from being brought to challenge it. Lower courts refused to consider these serious constitutional claims, flippantly concluding that Progress Ohio has no standing (the right to sue in Court) because it does not have a sufficiently "personal stake" in enforcement of the state constitution; and further because enforcement of the constitution's spending, debt, and corporate welfare limits are not a sufficiently important public interest to warrant an exemption from this personal stake requirement. The 1851 Center's arguments, which takes no position on the substantive issue - - the constitutionality of JobsOhio - - asserts the following: The Ohio Constitution demands that citizens and taxpayers maintain standing to enforce limits on tax, spending, and indebtedness legislation.   The lower courts in this case erred in relying on federal standing cases, which are centered on Article III of the federal constitution, because the language of the Ohio Constitution deliberately rejects such barriers to standing in Ohio, and contains no jurisdictional prohibition on taxpayers and citizens bringing public interest actions. Enforcing well-defined constitutional limits on state spending, indebtedness, and governmental conferral of special corporate privilege is "of great importance and interest to the public."   Ohioans' stake in enforcement of their constitution is sufficiently personal to maintain standing to enforce constitutional limits on state government's spending, indebtedness, and provision of special corporate privileges.   If Ohioans are required to have a "personal stake" in such actions beyond their role as citizens and taxpayers, as the lower courts require in this case, then no Ohioan will have the capacity to enforce these general spending, debt and corporate welfare limits, and Courts will have rendered those provisions effectively unenforceable. "Ohioans must have standing to defend the Ohio Constitution in court, if its' guarantees of limited government are to remain enforceable," said Maurice Thompson, Executive Director of the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law. "The Ohio Supreme Court's decision in this case needs to acknowledge that when courts strip Ohioans' of the right to enforce constitutional limits on government in court, they essentially redact those constitutional limits through procedural artifice. Ohio judges should enforce, not redact, the Ohio Constitution"