On December 19, 2013 the Ohio Supreme Court issued a case announcement affirming the 1990 conviction of Sandra Griffin and dismissing her most recent appeal. Read the opinion at http://supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/0/2013/2013-ohio-5566.pdf.

Phrases such as “We the People” and “Justice for All” signify a society of equality that commands an open government, a government that is subjected to the will of its citizens. Although the openness of our government and its continued success may be the subject of much debate, the public debate itself is proof that the great experiment of our founding fathers is still alive and well as we celebrate our 237th birthday.

The spirit of open government is the basis of this website.  The singular purpose of the website is to make the court more accessible to the people it serves.  As you navigate the website, you will note several areas of explanation from jury service to divorce proceedings.  There are also forms and news on legal topics of interest.  I hope the end result is a more informative experience. 

Finally, remember that this website is also an effort to help simplify a complicated legal system. There will be mistakes and oversights, so please have patience with the growing pains as the website moves forward.

Special thanks to Lynette Dotson, our website consultant,and the County IT department, who made this project possible.

Also, please feel free to take advantage of the numerous events on the Courthouse grounds, and admire the landscaping work done by Judge France and the Rotary Club.  Have a great summer!

Conceding that it is hard to draw the constitutional line, the Supreme Court on Thursday attempted once more to spell out when the government may use its money to try to control what people are allowed to say if they take the money.  Between the lines, the opinion seems to say that those who get the money can keep getting it even if what they say does not square with the government’s program goals. They just have to pay for such contradictions with their own money.

If that is the true meaning of the decision in Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International (docket 12-10), free speech under the First Amendment has made something of a gain.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.’s opinion for a six-to-two majority said that the government cannot impose a condition on receipt of government funds in a government program if that forces private groups to publicly express views on an issue that parrots the government’s views but is not what those groups themselves believe or want to say.  That, the opinion said, is a form of “leveraging” money to compel unwanted speech, and the First Amendment frowns on that.

The decision leaves no doubt that the government can tell such groups that they cannot use the federal funds they accept to cover the costs of speaking out in contradiction to the government’s views.  Such a restriction, the Chief Justice indicated, assures that the funds do not underwrite the contrary views.  But when the government seeks to control the recipient’s views on the policy issues, that pushes beyond the program’s limits and violates the First Amendment, the opinion concluded.

Here is the way the Chief Justice put that point: “By requiring recipients to profess a specific belief, the [command of what they can say] goes beyond defining the limits of the federally funded program to defining the recipient.”

It is one thing, the opinion said, for the government to refuse to underwrite opposing policy views by organizations seeking public funds.  It is something else, it added, when the government goes beyond and seeks to conscript an organization into being a policy mouthpiece for the government, even if that contradicts its own views.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing in dissent for himself and Justice Clarence Thomas, said that “the real evil” of the ruling was that it barred the government from demanding a commitment from those who get public funds to carry out the policy views that are essential to the program.  “One can expect, in the future, frequent challenges to the denial of government funding” when the government seeks to further a specific ideological program, the dissent suggested.

The ruling dealt with a federal law implementing a large government program of trying to eradicate the global scourge of AIDS.  The government provides funds to groups that carry out, overseas, specific programs to reduce the risky behavior that is believed to help spread the deadly disease.

One of the conditions the government sets for getting any funds — and this was the only condition at issue before the Court Thursday — is that any organization getting federal funds must state that the organization explicitly opposes prostitution or other forms of sex trafficking.  In other words, the mandate compels the organization to publicly oppose any move to legalize or even to tolerate prostitution.

The organizations that challenged that mandate do not themselves actually favor prostitution or any other form of sexual exploitation, but they want to publicly remain neutral on that as a policy question.  If they declare themselves opposed, they argued, that will make it harder for them to work with at-risk groups like prostitutes, because the would-be helpers will be seen as adversaries.

Because of the government mandate, though, they simply were ineligible for any federal funds unless they publicly echoed the government’s anti-prostitution policy declaration.  Lower federal courts found that would probably violate their First Amendment rights of free speech, and the Supreme Court’s ruling established that it was, indeed, an unconstitutional condition.

The Court rejected an argument that the Obama administration had made in attempting to salvage the policy view mandate — that is, that an organization could get funds while following that mandate, but then set up an affiliate organization that would not share in the funds but could express whatever views it wished.

Such a two-organization approach, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, is sufficient as a First Amendment matter only if the organization is allowed to exercise its free speech rights “outside the scope of the federal program.”  But this won’t work, the Chief Justice added, when the organization getting the funds must “espouse a specific belief as its own.”  There is no alternative forum where it can state its views if they do not exactly square with the government’s, according to the ruling.

The policy declaration mandate, the opinion said, “goes beyond preventing recipients from using private funds in a way that would undermine the federal program.  It requires them to pledge allegiance to the government’s policy of eradicating prostitution.”

The Chief Justice’s opinion was supported by Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony M. Kennedy, and Sonia Sotomayor.  Justice Elena Kagan did not take part, presumably because she had had something to do with the case in her former post as U.S. Solicitor General.

This decision, in plain English:

In 2003, as part of a broad federal effort to try to stop the spread of the AIDS disease worldwide, and to treat those already affected, Congress created a broad program of preventive, educational, and treatment programs, providing billions of federal dollars that private organizations would use to carry out the effort in specific activities overseas.

Because Congress believed that several forms of sexual trafficking, including prostitution, contributed to the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus, the 2003 law specified that any organization getting funds under the program must declare as its own policy view that it opposed prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation.

Some of the private groups taking part in the program, however, have believed that, if they got out in public as themselves opposed to prostitution, it would inhibit their chances of working with prostitutes and with other at-risk groups.  While they do not themselves favor prostitution, they wanted to remain neutral on the matter, but that neutrality would not satisfy the mandate of the program to have an organizational policy against such sexual activity.

They contended that the funding condition sought to control their points of view, in violation of the free-speech guarantees of the First Amendment.  The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed with that argument.  It is one thing, the Court said, for the government to forbid these organizations to use the federal funds they receive to pay for public policy expressions that contradict the government’s policy goals, but it is another to try to take control of their right to frame and express their own views.  Such a viewpoint control approach, the Court concluded, is an invalid form of coercing private speech, and that violates the First Amendment.

Posted on http://www.scotusblog.com

U.S. Supreme Court sketch artist Art Lien provides an interesting view of his day at the Court.

My day at the Court begins early. Arriving a couple hours before I have to take my seat in the courtroom allows me time to warm up with a quick sketch or two of whatever strikes me as interesting. It may be lawyers lining up to be admitted to the bar, or Justice Kagan getting her morning coffee in the cafeteria. In the next few weeks I’ll certainly be sketching the early morning line outside the building waiting for the big end-of-term decisions.

At 9:30 I take my seat in one of the alcoves to the left of the bench. From there I’ll see Clerk Suter chatting with the lawyers I sketched earlier who are now seated; I’ll see other lawyers who are standing and greeting each other; I’ll see visitors looking up at the friezes, pointing out Moses and Hammurabi. All great subjects for a sketch. But very often I’ll use this time, especially if it’s a big story, to get a head start on the “wideshot” –  the scene-setting sketch of the entire bench, columns, lawyers, press, and public. At this stage all I can do is the architecture, but as the reporters begin to file in and take their seats on the benches in front of me I add them to the wide shot. Every bit helps, because I won’t have time to pay attention to those details once things get under way.

If there are opinions I’ll usually sketch a partial bench highlighting the Justice delivering the opinion. And of course, if a Justice reads a dissent from the bench I’ll capture that as well.

The real work is covering arguments. In addition to the wide shot, or in a really big case the “wide wide shot,” I need sketches of each lawyer, sketches of certain Justices, and maybe also some partial bench shots depicting the Justices’ body language.

I used to concentrate on the lawyer at the lectern, trying to capture him or her as best I could. To do that, the best seat is in the first alcove closest to the bench. The problem with that seating, though, is that part of the bench is obstructed and you can barely see Justices Breyer, Thomas, and Scalia. Lately — and I do mean lately, I’m a very slow learner — I’ve come to realize that it’s the questions from the Justices that make the story. As a result I’ve moved to the further alcove — which, while limiting my view of the arguing attorney to three-quarters of the back of his or her head except when the questions come from the extreme left side of the bench, allows me to see all of the Justices.

Another thing I’ve learned is how much it helps to have at least a passing familiarity with the case that is going to be argued. Often I would be asked how the arguments went and I had no idea, because I was too busy drawing. I still have a hard time following most arguments, but a little reading ahead of time has helped immensely.

After the arguments are over, I still have a good two or three hours’ worth of work ahead of me to finish the drawings, adding color and making sure I got Justice Sotomayor’s silver bangles or the right jabot on Justice Ginsburg. All of the male Justices get red ties all the time; that’s artistic license.