A group of Youngstown State University professors who oppose Ohio Senate Bill 1, the controversial higher education law, has turned in paperwork that’s the first required step toward trying to repeal it with a statewide vote.
The group said they turned in more than 4,500 voter signatures on Monday alongside a summary of SB1, which contains sweeping changes meant to combat what its Republican sponsors view as a liberal bias at the state’s colleges and universities. Gov. Mike DeWine has signed the bill into law, which takes effect in late June.
The signatures will be reviewed by Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose and the summary by Republican Attorney General Dave Yost. But submissions are required under the state’s complex, multi-step process for placing state referendums before voters. The repeal campaign is being led by the union representing professors at Youngstown State University.
Mark Vopat, one of the repeal campaign’s leaders, previously has described the campaign as a “long-shot” and a “Hail Mary” to block the law.
But he said in an interview on Monday that he’s upgraded his view of his chances of success based on the support his group has drawn since it was announced last week.
“I actually am fairly optimistic,” said Vopat, the president of the YSU faculty union. “I think the people behind this bill have underestimated how many people hate it.”
A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office confirmed receiving the signatures on Monday. Yost’s office posted a copy of the repeal petition on its website, saying a response is due by May 5.
Some of the changes in SB1 include requiring the ending diversity, equity and inclusion (or DEI) programming at college campuses, requiring an American civics course for graduation, and axing faculty members’ right to strike. The bill also requires faculty to publicly post their syllabi online.
Critics say the measure will stifle academic freedom and hamper the state’s universities, and also describe it as an attack on labor rights.
How can citizens repeal a law in Ohio?
A campaign looking to repeal a newly passed law must collect 248,092 valid voter signatures within 90 days after the governor signs the law. Under the states referendum rules, the 90-day deadline to challenge SB1 falls in late June. That’s also the time SB1 will take effect.
The required number of signatures is equal to 6% of the people who voted in the most recent state election for governor. The signatures must come from at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties. The per-county total must be an amount equal to 3% of the votes cast in that county in the most recent election for governor.
When do voters get their say?
If the repeal campaign succeeds in meeting the deadline, the measure then would go up for a vote in November.
These complex signature requirement is what makes it very difficult to repeal laws in Ohio.
Collecting signatures usually requires campaigns to spend millions to hire professional signature-gathering firms to get their measure on the ballot. Getting voters to approve any controversial state ballot measure then typically requires a costly political campaign.
When is the last time voters overturned a bill?
Organized labor helped fund the last successful repeal campaign in 2011, when voters overwhelmingly repealed Senate Bill 5, which curtailed collective bargaining rights for government workers.
But a repeal campaign isn’t allowed to even begin collecting those 248,000 signatures until they first get their petition paperwork approved by state officials.
How does the petition approval process work?
The Monday submission by the repeal campaign triggers a mandatory review from state officials. LaRose will turn the signatures over to county elections officials to verify whether at least 1,000 of them are valid. And Yost will determine whether the petition language is a “fair and truthful” summary of SB1’s effects.
LaRose and Yost, both of whom are Republicans, must perform those reviews within 10 business days – a term that excludes weekends and holidays.
If either LaRose or Yost reject the petition forms, the repeal campaign must start over from scratch.
Re-collecting the 1,000 voter signatures is relatively straightforward. But if Yost rejects the summary, the campaign will have to make changes to the petition language to make it more likely to pass muster.
Does the state have a history of rejecting proposed petition language?
It seems likely that Yost will reject the petition at least once. In August 2019, Yost rejected summary language from a well-funded campaign seeking to repeal House Bill 6, an energy law that later was revealed to be at the center of a corruption investigation by federal prosecutors.
In that case, the repeal campaign tweaked its language and resubmitted it, and got Yost to approve it two weeks later. But the campaign still failed to meet the 90-day deadline for collecting and submitting its voter signatures.
More recently, Yost has drawn a hard line when interpreting whether citizen-initiated ballot issue summaries are “fair and truthful.” In October, the Ohio Supreme Court ordered Yost to green-light a summary for a proposed constitutional amendment that would make it easier for citizens to sue police for excessive force after Yost rejected its petition language eight times. The issue is still tied up in court after Yost appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Who’s behind the repeal campaign?
The campaign to repeal SB1 is being led by leaders of the union representing professors at Youngstown State University. The local union is pursuing the measure independently of the state labor movement, including the Ohio Education Association, a large, politically active teacher’s union that’s the YSU union’s parent organization.
Vopat, the president of the YSU professors union, said some additional organizations have helped with the initial petition process, including the American Association of University Professors – a different union that represents university professors – elements of the Ohio Democratic Party and some Northeast Ohio progressive grassroots organizations.
Vopat said his group doesn’t yet have major financial commitments, though. It’s still setting up a Political Action Committee, which will allow the repeal campaign to accept and spend campaign contributions.
He said he’s trying to make the case to the labor movement to fund the campaign. He said some in labor circles want to fight SB1 in court, while others are saving their resources for when state lawmakers eventually pass a more sweeping anti-labor bill, such as a proposed “right to work” bill that’s circulating in Columbus. State labor unions, including the OEA, also have been involved with other unrelated ballot measures, including stalled proposals to hike the state minimum wage and to reform the redistricting process.
But Vopat said Republican legislators aren’t going to make the tactical mistake again of passing one big Senate Bill 5-style bill that can draw unified opposition from organized labor.
“I think they’re going to break these up into lots of little pieces that chip away at labor rights,” Vopat said. “And we have to draw a line in the sand somewhere.”
