Author Archives: Christopher P. Finney

As we reported here, in late July, the Ohio Elections Commission made findings against Jonathan White from Dayton and his misnamed Cincinnatians for Jobs Now (misnamed because Mr. White testified that the group included no “Cincinnatians”).

Today, our client in that case, Christopher Smitherman reports, here, that the Ohio Elections Commisison has written to Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine asking that he pursue enforcement of the subpoena against Mr. RIchardson, including “potential criminal penalties.”

You may read that letter here.

We wrote here about our important win against a state statute that harasses non-incumbent candidates for public office when they fail to place the word “for” between their name and the office sought.  It was a silly statute, and regulatory and enforcement scheme, until you realize how pernicious their work really was.

Read the Columbus Dispatch article .

Read the Court News Ohio article here.

This case is the third in a series of important wins against the statutes enforced by the Ohio Elections Commission that for years has resulted in endless harassment and intimidation of candidates for public office engaging in political speech.  Two of these cases went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court where we attained a reversal of the 6th Circuit and District Court decisions..

The OEC has basically hung out the “out of business” sign on more than 3/4 of its work regulating elections thanks to these important cases.

Science Magazine has a thoughtful article that just came out today about the policy and practice of the University of Cincinnati to segregate male and female students from one another in science labs.

“Women and men should not be working together in science,” according to Teaching Assistant Mohamud El Demery.  This policy was ratified when Professor Larry Bortner met with our client, 19-year-old Casey Helmicki and confirmed it was the department’s practice.

Read the Science Magazine article here.

Read more about this case here.

 

 

This firm has been pleased to represent Cincinnati City Council member Christopher Smitherman in an action before the Ohio Elections Commission regarding some $300,000 secretly spent during the 2013 City Council election targeted towards the defeat of Smitherman.

In that year, Smitherman was running for reelection.  Smitherman is African American and was then the President of the Cincinnati Chapter of the NAACP.  Mysteriously, ads began appearing on Black radio accusing Smitherman of selling out the African American community and encouraging people to reject Smitherman at the polls.  Lots and lots of ads.  These were followed by printed flyers with similar messaging distributed primarily in the African American community.  The ads were placed by a group called “Cincinnatians for Jobs Now.”

However, Cincinnatians for Jobs Now had never existed before.  No one had ever heard of it.  And no one knew of its members.  Further, it filed no campaign finance reports as required by Ohio law to reveal its donors or the expenditure of its funds.  They had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars secretly in violation of Ohio law.

This firm was retained after the election to bring a formal action before the Ohio Elections Commission to pursue this matter.

The secretive group claims that it is no group at all and included no one from Cincinnati, but rather was a single individual named Jonathan White from Dayton.  White testified both in his deposition and at trial before the Ohio Elections, incredibly, that he set up a P.O. Box for the new PAC, but told no one of the P.O. Box address.  Magically, several checks signed by union leader Rob Richardson, Sr. totaling $300,000 then showed up in that P.O. Box.  This fiction was important for Cincinnatians for Jobs Now to maintain inasmuch as cooperation between two or more citizens constitutes a PAC that must report.  The failure to do so is a criminal violation.

 

The OEC refused to issue to Rob Richardson, Sr. a subpoena to force his deposition.  They did issue two subpoenas to force his participation in a hearing before the OEC, and yet, illegally, he refused to appear.

In the end, the OEC found that Cincinnatians for Jobs Now and Jonathan White had engaged in illegal conduct, ordered them to file their campaign finance reports and levied a $15,000 fine against them.

It took nearly three years to bring the matter to a hearing and to arrive at this conclusion.

Our thanks go to attorney Curt Hartman and to a steadfast client, Christopher Smitherman, who both saw this matter through to a successful end.

The Cincinnati Enquirer has this story on the case this morning.

The 10th District Court of Appeals today ruled in favor of our client in Magda v. Ohio Elections Commission, a case dating all the way back to the 2010 election.

That year, our client was a candidate for Ashtabula County Treasurer.  In most of her campaign signs and literature, she used he word “for” between the words “Kathy Magda” and “Ashtabula County Treasurer,” but on one piece of literature prepared by her husband, she omitted the word “for,” so the title she had not then earned appeared just after her name. That has historically been the basis an automatic finding of a violation of O.R.C. § 3517.21(B)(1).

Thus, when a political opponent filed such a Complaint — even absent any evidence of intent to mislead or that anyone was in fact misled — the Ohio Elections Commission dutifully found that a violation existed.

Our firm challenged that finding in an administrative appeal coupled with a suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violations of Ms. Magda’s rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

[It is important to note that coupling of an Administrative Appeal under O.R.C. Chapter 119 along with a constitutional challenge under 42 U.S.C. §1983 is a somewhat unique approach in Ohio Courts. This decision provides solid support for such a challenge.]

In 2014, the Franklin County Common Pleas Court upheld the OEC decision and rejected our client’s constitutional claims.  It was that decision that was on appeal before the 10th District Court of Appeals.

The 10th District decision was a resounding victory for our client, both overturning the finding of a violation of O.R.C. § 3517.21(B)(1), but also declaring the statute to be unconstitutional and instructing the trial court to enter an order permanently enjoining its enforcement.

You may read the decision here.

Once again, our lead appellate attorney, Curt Hartman, led the team that won this effort.  Chris Finney handled the oral argument at the 10th District Court of Appeals.

This nearly six year journey — involving novel approaches to the law — is yet another example of how we “make a difference” for our clients.