A new citizen group hoping to enshrine LGBTQ protections and other anti-discrimination provisions in the Ohio Constitution will have a tougher time getting the proposed amendment before voters next year.
The Republican-controlled Ohio Ballot Board ruled Wednesday that the proposed amendment constituted two separate proposals. This means the group, if it wants to champion all the elements of its original proposal, will have to split the amendment into two issues and collect hundreds of thousands of valid voter signatures for each to get them on the ballot.
As conceived, the original proposal had two major sections. One section would expand equal rights protections to include multiple new categories of people, including sexual orientation, gender identity or expression regardless of sex assigned at birth, genetic information and familial status.
It also had a separate section that explicitly would repeal the same-sex marriage ban that voters added to Ohio’s constitution in 2004 but that has gone unenforced for a decade after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision. The amendment would have replaced the ban with new language guaranteeing the right to marry to any two people 18 and older who aren’t genetically closer than second cousins.
But Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and other Republicans on the Ohio Ballot Board said the new anti-discrimination protections and the proposed repeal of the same-sex marriage ban were two separate topics. They said that violated an Ohio law that says proposed amendments can only deal with one topic, a rule that’s meant to prevent “logrolling.” That’s a term that means improving an unpopular measure’s chances of passing by tacking onto it a more popular but unrelated subject.
Republicans on the Ballot Board previewed possible campaigning against the proposal, if it ever makes the ballot, during a Wednesday meeting in Columbus.
Issue of trans athletes raised as objection to amendment
“Exactly how is it the same purpose to allow biological men in the same locker room as girls, how is that the same thing of allowing consenting people of the same sex to get married?” State Sen. Theresa Gavarone, a Bowling Green Republican, asked Corey Colombo, a Democratic elections lawyer representing the amendment campaign.
Colombo unsuccessfully tried to convince the Ballot Board to keep the amendment in one piece. Colombo said the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that amendments are a single topic as long as they bear “some reasonable relationship to a general object or purpose.”
Democrats accused Republicans of splitting the amendments only because of politics.
“I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt. But it does feel political,” said state Rep. Terrence Upchurch, a Cleveland Democrat and Ballot Board member. “… I mean that, I think that anybody that’s looking at what’s being proposed, it’s pretty simplistic to nature. It’s one issue. It’s cut and dry.”
What does the campaign plan to do next?
The vote means that if backers of the amendment want to keep trying to make the ballot in its original form, they’ll have to do a lot more work. That would include collecting two sets of 413,487 signatures. If they succeed in doing that, voters will consider each section separately, meaning the campaign will have to win two statewide votes.
Lis Regula, a spokesperson for the amendment campaign, said his group has a few options to consider. It could include suing and trying to convince the Ohio Supreme Court that the Ballot Board got it wrong. Or it could head back to the Ohio Ballot Board either by trying to move forward with two separate amendments or by removing the marriage ban repeal language from the overall amendment.
“This was going to be difficult no matter what because of the number of signatures required in Ohio and the size of Ohio,” Regula said. “But equal rights is something that we have heard even Governor DeWine talk about wanting to make Ohio a welcoming state for all.”
More about the amendment and the campaign behind it
In its original form, the amendment would have declared that equality of rights would apply to 15 categories:
- Race
- Color
- Creed or religion
- Sexual orientation
- Gender identity or expression regardless of sex assigned at birth
- Pregnancy status
- Genetic information
- Disease status
- Age
- Disability
- Recovery status
- Familial status
- Ancestry
- National origin
- Military or veteran status
These protections would apply to housing, education, healthcare, health insurance, public spaces and accommodations, state records and legal identification.
While the anti-discrimination categories are broad-ranging, the current hottest political topic on the list is transgender rights, which Republicans in Ohio and elsewhere have targeted with legal restrictions, particularly those affecting young people. Any of these restrictions could be ruled illegal if the new amendment were to pass.
Regula, a spokesperson for the campaign, is a transgender man who works for Men Having Babies, an advocacy group that helps LGBTQ men become parents. But Regula said the amendment could target laws on the books that impose special restrictions on people with HIV.
Regula said the amendment is modeled after one that Nevada voters approved in 2022. The state separately voted in 2020 to repeal the same-sex marriage ban on its books.
Getting constitutional amendments on the ballot is expensive because of Ohio’s signature-collecting requirements, which include getting hundreds of thousands of voter signatures, including a minimum number from 44 of the state’s 88 counties.
Regula also said the group is targeting the 2026 election specifically because the governor’s race is expected to draw higher turnout than the state would in off-year elections when there’s no statewide candidate election.
“We want a big sample size,” Regula said. “We want to know the real feelings of all Ohioans, not just the people who are going to vote no matter what.”
Other proposed amendments are being considered
Ohio saw high-profile ballot issue campaigns in 2023 and 2024. But there will be no ballot issues on the ballot this November. There other amendment campaigns out there, tough. One proposal wants to make it easier to sue police and other government officials for misconduct; a second proposal wants to abolish property taxes in Ohio; and a third would expand voting rights.
It’s not clear if any of these proposals will make the ballot since none of their backers appear to have the large network of supporters typically needed to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures.
