Production and distribution of city club forums and ideastream public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black, Fond of Greater Cleveland, Inc.. Hello and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to creating conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Tuesday, October 22nd.

I'm Karen Kasler, Statehouse bureau chief for Ohio Public Radio and Television and the moderator for today's candidate forum, presented in partnership with the Ohio Debate Commission.

The Ohio Supreme Court is the highest court in the state system consisting of six associate justices and one Chief Justice.

All the seats on the court are elected at large by the voters of Ohio starting in 2022.

Ohio became one of only seven states that elects state Supreme Court justices based on partizan elections.

This November 5th, six candidates will be running for three open seats.

Invitations were extended to all six candidates, and with early voting now underway, we are fortunate to be joined this afternoon by three of those candidates starting down at the end.

Michael Donnelly, Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio.

Melody Stewart.

Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio, Sir.

And Lisa Forbes, Justice, judge of the eighth District Court of Appeals for the state of Ohio.

So before we begin, let me first explain the format of today's candidate forum.

We will first hear five minute opening remarks from each of the candidates, starting with Justice Donnelly and going down the line.

After their remarks, we'll move to a panel conversation that I will moderate and keeping with City Club tradition and audience, Q&A will follow.

The panel discussion for our live streaming audience.

If you have a question for our candidates, you can text it to 3305415794 and city Club staff will try to work it into the second half of the program.

Members and friends of the City of Cleveland please join me in welcoming Justices Donley and just Stewart and Judge Forbes.

So we have a five minute opening remarks there.

So Justice Donnelly, go right ahead.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, everyone.

It is certainly an honor to be here at this historic institution.

Once again, this is a second time.

So it's a it's a great I consider it a great honor.

My name is Michael Donnelly.

And since 2019, it's been my absolute privilege to serve as your associate justice on the Ohio Supreme Court.

But to be honest, it's a position I never aspired to.

I started my career as a county prosecutor for the late, great Stephanie Tubbs Jones that I went into civil litigation.

Absolutely.

And practiced for a total of 12 years.

And then in 2004, I ran for a seat on Ohio's largest trial court, the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, where I served for 14 years.

And to be honest, I absolutely love that job.

I thought I would retire a trial court judge.

I love being part of the process of bringing resolution to conflict in people's lives, and that's what the courts do.

We resolve conflicts and we protect people's rights.

Nine of those years were the most rewarding for me because I served as a mental health court judge.

25% of my felony criminal docket was made up of people who suffer from schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder and developmentally disabled individuals who found themselves in the criminal justice system.

And I'm very proud of the fact that we were able to keep the great majority of them out of the prison system where they often go in, become abused and come out worse than before, mistreated.

And we were able to keep the community safe.

So it taught me there was a better way of doing things.

And in 2018, two seats became open on the Ohio Supreme Court.

And I thought to myself, that would be a position where if I could speak with greater influence to advocate for much needed criminal justice reform and civil justice reform to improve our system for the next generation, that I would value that position.

So I took a chance with my junior colleague and friend, Justice Stewart.

We traveled the state of Ohio and talked about things that I'm very passionate about transparency.

As a judge, I found that I did everything on the record down at the Common Pleas Court because early on in my career as a judge, I came to the conclusion that no one should ever do anything or say anything in the back room that you wouldn't repeat verbatim.

So I changed the policy in which I engage with litigants, and I did everything on the record.

And that way everyone was held accountable for what they represented, including myself.

So I ran on this platform of transparency, and it's been a dream come true at the Ohio Supreme Court.

I've been able to advocate for those very policies that I'm talking about.

And one of the ones I most passionate about is advocating for data driven criminal sentencing reform.

We have 50,000 people in prison system.

I think we're number five in the United States.

And every practitioner knows and they'll tell you this is the truth, that with the lack of data and our antiquated sentencing laws, they are programed to produce both racial disparity and just general disparity every single day.

And my contention has always been that public confidence is threatened when people believe that their sentencing outcome is more tied to whichever sentencing judge that you're randomly assigned to rather than the rule of law, which requires consistency, fairness and proportionality.

And any practitioner who practices in the Ohio system can tell you that you can have a sentencing hearing in one judge courtroom, carry that out with the same lawyers, the same facts, and have an outcome of probation.

You can take those same lawyers, same facts, walk 15 feet across the hall, do it again, and wind up with an outcome of 20, 30 or even more years in prison.

It's all over the place.

And I've I've written a paper on it called The Guardrails Are Off.

And we need to fix this program by moving towards a centralized sentencing database.

I've been the most vocal advocate for the creation of this much needed app because our trial court judges are directed under the law to treat similarly situated defendants with similar sentences.

Regardless of such irrelevant factors like the color of their skin or their socioeconomic place in society.

But they are powerless to do this with these with these lack of guardrails and lack of data that keeps them consistent with themselves and consistent with the other judges in the courthouse and throughout the state.

So that's what I want to continue.

I'm also a big advocate for improving the post-conviction system in Ohio.

I'm running time.

Okay.

Okay.

We'll talk about what else.

But it's maximum transparency, maximum fairness and maximum efficiency.

That's what I pledge if I'm reelected.

Thank you very much.

Justice Stewart Thank you.

Thank you all for being here.

So I'm Justice Melodie Stewart.

I'm a native of this great city.

I was born and raised here all my life.

I grew up in the rough neighborhood of Cleveland back in the sixties during the Hough riots.

I remember vividly, although I was just a small tyke, I remember vividly the smell of burning buildings.

I remember looking over the windowsill and having my mother say, Get away from the windows, honey.

Get away from the windows.

I remember armored cars going down our street, and I remember there being some talk about a curfew, although I didn't know what that was at my age.

So I remember that time being interesting.

And I was and I vaguely remember thinking this wasn't a good thing, but somehow, someway, I will know what this means at some point in my life.

I was raised in a tough neighborhood by a single mother who had me later in life.

My mother was almost 40 when I was born, and she was born and raised in the segregated South, where schools for black or Negro children only went up to the eighth grade and she was one of 11 children, nine girls, two boys.

When the girls finished, they either stayed in their small town in Virginia and worked as a domestic or moved up north to live with a sibling, an older sister for better opportunities.

My mother did the latter move to Washington, D.C., first made her way back, made her way here to Cleveland, where she worked for and retired from the US Postal Service.

My mother died in 2000 when I first ran for the Court of Appeals.

She died the morning after my first fund raiser, so she never got to vote for me.

I remember sending her ballot back from the nursing home and so she never got to see me be a judge.

But everything I am standing here before you is due to her.

So when I was going through her things in 2000, I found out that she went back and got her GED when she was in her sixties.

One year before I finished college.

But my mother taught me the love of the arts and the love of education.

She acted here at Karamu Theater in the forties and fifties before I was born.

She taught me how to play Scrabble and password, not in beta and Scrabble until I got to college.

She instilled in me the love of the arts and worked over time at the post office so that I could simultaneously study music at the Cleveland Music School settlement while I was in school.

So I majored in music at the Conservatory of Music, the University of Cincinnati, because with the name Melody, what else would I study in college?

Right?

So I'm a classically trained pianist and I took that music degree promptly, got a job in the health care industry for my first year out and was intellectually board, applied to law school, spent three years in law school saying, Do I really want to be a lawyer?

Do I really want to go to law school?

I did.

That started a civil defense litigation for the city of Cleveland when George Voinovich was mayor.

I then went into law academe.

I was a law professor here at Cleveland State University at the University of Toledo's Law School and assistant dean at CSU and director of Student Services at Case Western.

I've had the privilege of working for three of our nine law schools in Ohio.

Then I ran for the Court of Appeals and was finally successful in 2006, where I served for 12 years.

The 12 years on the Court of Appeals, plus my finishing up my sixth year here on Supreme Court makes me the most experienced appellate jurist currently sitting on the Ohio Supreme Court.

Thank you.

And while I was at the Court of Appeals, I went back to school and I got a Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve, the Mandel School, because that degree helps me to ask the right questions, and it helps me to think about possible unintended consequences of decisions that we make as jurists.

And so I'm running for reelection under the same things that my senior colleague and, by the way, senior by 23 hours and 59 minutes, I just won.

But he constantly reminds me of it.

But running for maximum transparency in our court to make it more efficient and more effective courts.

We did some of that when we got there.

We extended the filing deadline from 459 to 1159.

We got rid of some of the paper that got circulated so much in our court and went to electronic distribution things.

And so I will stop there because I don't want to get the high side like Mike Donnelly got in answering any questions that you have.

But hopefully will return me to the court in two weeks.

Thank you.

Doug Forbes Well, good afternoon and thank you all so much for for coming out.

And you can hear my voice is a little bit funny.

I was indeed at the Cardinals game on Friday and not quite over it yet in every way.

But so I'm Lisa Forbes.

I'm a judge on the eighth District Court of Appeals right here in Cuyahoga County.

And I'm running for this Supreme Court to fill the unexpired term, to fill the open seat.

And I'm running because I want to do my part to make sure that the Supreme Court is a firewall that protects our democracy, the rule of law and your rights.

Yes.

And I want to make sure that the that the Supreme Court is fair, is balanced and is independent.

Those traits, those things are our lofty goals, but they're also what the Supreme Court should be and what the Supreme Court should do.

And so I, I stepped up to the plate because I'm concerned about some rulings.

I'm concerned about the way in which the court has the power to define words and to interpret laws that may be more result oriented than true to the law or to the intent behind the law.

So that's why I'm running.

And I mean, one example I can and can give you now is the famous boneless chicken wing case where the word boneless was defined as a matter of law to mean it's a cooking style and was was taken to mean that you should expect the bones of something is labeled as boneless.

And I think that's concerning.

Going forward, I will pledge to you that I will bring my expertise in the law.

My commitment to community and my work ethic to bear.

And that if I am elected to the Supreme Court and then if I need to define a word, I promise you that I will use a dictionary.

So I'll just give you the quick informational background that, as I said, my expertise in the law comes from the 27 years that I practiced law in courts all over the state of Ohio, trial courts and courts of appeals.

I was a partner in a national law firm for the majority of that time.

I left my my partnership when I became a judge on the Court of Appeals.

I did that because I really felt called to public service as I was looking to the last chapter of my career.

I wanted to give back to the law and into the community in a more meaningful, comprehensive way.

So that is what brought me to the bench.

And I'm happy to say the people of Cuyahoga County did put me on the Court of Appeals where I very much love my job.

I get to go in every day.

Confronted with the words above the bench at the eighth District Court of Appeals.

And those words are that ours is a government of law and not of men or women.

But that is an important and important founding concept in our country, and one that I tried to bring to bear every day.

My commitment to community comes from many, many years as a volunteer, including my years of service on the board at the centers.

I just finished term as chair of the board there.

And then and that is an organization that helps provide high quality health care, both physical and mental health care, job training services, Head Start and and residential services for adolescents who don't have parents to take care of them.

And then my work ethic I get from my family, I'm the granddaughter of immigrants and I am a my grandfathers were both coal miners in western Pennsylvania and I am a first generation college graduate.

College came possible to me through things like work, study, student loans and waiting on a whole lot of tables.

So I tell you that because I appreciate that as a candidate for the Supreme Court now, as a judge on the eighth District, I should say, and candidate for the Supreme Court, I appreciate that.

I am a living example.

The opportunity that my grandparents came to America for.

And I want to make sure that that is available for generations to come.

So that's a little bit about me, what I what I'm concerned about and what I hope to bring to the bench.

And I look forward to the rest of our discussion today.

I'm glad you mentioned the voice.

I was at two games, so that's why I sound like this didn't help.

Well, let's just launch right into the politics of this, because there are politics of this now, because as I mentioned in the intro, you are all running under party designations.

You're listed at the very top of the ballot right after the presidential candidates.

And you've long been endorsed by political parties in terms of candidates for the judiciary.

You've all said to me, because I've had the privilege of talking to all six of the candidates that you're running as independent candidates, not as part of a team.

But it's likely that voters are going to view you as part of a team because you do have those party designations.

So with all that in mind, should this race be nonpartisan or does, as the Republicans have told me, the party designation give voters important information?

And I'll just start with you just just as normally.

Yes, I've been on record since 2011 saying we should have an absolutely, completely nonpartizan judiciary if we're going to have an elected judiciary.

It should be nonpartisan.

I'd like to see us move towards some type of retention system where we don't have to run each other or against each other and raise money.

But if you look at my political handouts, you won't see the word Republican or Democrat on here.

I stress my independence as a as a jurist.

And I think that's the way it should be.

This party label was thrown on me by a legislature and everybody knows why they did it.

It was opposed by the Ohio State Bar Association.

It was opposed by the Ohio Judicial Conference made up of jurists who are supported by both political parties.

And they said, Why are you doing this?

And just as former Justice Pifer, who heads the Ohio Judicial Conference, went down to that when this was being debated and told them, we all know why you're doing this.

You're doing it to keep Democratic supported justices off.

And, you know, when I take the oath, I don't take an oath to any political party.

My oath is to follow the law of the state of Ohio and the United States of America.

Justice Stewart Yes, it does give information, but I don't think it gives important information.

There's a reason why we don't have any jurists in our state who are under unaffiliated or unaffiliated either way, with the other party or truly independent, because the parties rule and control everything but the judiciary.

The judicial branch of government is really unlike the executive branch and the legislative branch in that they are always doing things that are political.

They are in the legislature.

There's horse trading.

You know, you vote for my bill, you know, I'll vote for your bill and the executive branch.

They can come out on positions.

They can put words on ballot petitions that don't represent what the petition is, ballot language.

They can do all sorts of things, political and and suffer no consequences from it.

We can't.

And the judiciary, we're guided by the code of professional conduct and the code of ethical conduct of judicial conduct.

And we don't barter.

We don't go into conference and say, well, you vote for the case, you side with me, I'll side with you on that one.

Our oath is to uphold the law and the Constitution and laws of the United States.

And so what?

Putting party affiliation on the ballot has done because we were, of course, supported by our parties.

There's the media.

There's no way you write about us without writing about our party labels.

So it's not like we were keeping it a secret.

But what they've used it as is a weapon to politicize our courts more.

This is the first time all three of us have run with a party affiliation on the ballot.

And so it has to voters focus on things that are not really salient to whether you're going to have a good public servant in that office.

And it was no doubt that my opponent, who is a sitting colleague, there's no question that he would be running against me if he didn't have party affiliation on the ballot because he's so unqualified for the job.

Judge Forbes Yeah, I think that I find it very disturbing because I think as Justice Stewart was just saying, I think it gives the wrong impression that we're political actors.

When we are ruling on a case, it should be wholly dependent on the law and the facts of that case and not any broader question.

There's no no, there's no overarching dedication, commitment to anything but the law and the facts.

The biggest concern I have about it is that it creates the impression that perhaps affiliation with a party is going to impact an outcome of a case, and that degrades the public confidence in the courts as a whole.

And that's very disturbing right now, confidence in the judiciary to actually dispense justice fairly and even handedly is at an all time low and according to public opinion polls.

And that's no, that's not good in a democratic society that is dependent on the social compact that we all have with one another, that the law is going to be.

As I said at the outset, we are a government of laws, not of men.

This is about our agreement for how our democratic system of governance is going to work and undermining it in this way, I fear, has much broader implications.

Some of the decisions that come out of the Ohio Supreme Court do end up being political.

For instance, when I talk to all three of you, you all cited the boneless chicken case, boneless chicken wings cases, as an example of a ruling that maybe you didn't care for.

But the Republican candidates, when I talk to them, they all cited the DeVos decision as the reason why they are running that ruling, limiting excessive bail and saying public safety should not be a consideration in setting cash bail.

It sparked a constitutional amendment that basically overturned what you did.

The Republicans I spoke to had some harsh words for that decision.

Justice leaders called the ruling idiotic.

Judge Hawkins said it was outrageous and a step too far.

Judge Stranahan said she was concerned that a jurist is putting our public at risk of violent offenses being committed.

I want to start with you, Justice Stewart.

What can you tell people about that decision because you were on the court when it was rendered?

The first thing I tell people is that decision was the absolute dog whistle for the 2022 election for the Supreme Court.

That was a case that totally misconstrued the law that both I'm not sure about Judge Shanahan, but clearly Joe Dieter's as probably a political favor to the DeWine's made that case more than what it is.

So that case dealt with a defendant who got a cash bail at some large amount, probably, I don't know, 1.5 million or something.

I don't remember the exact number.

And then the prosecutors brought family members and the victim of that crime and said what they're fearful of of this guy.

And so the judge elevated the the amount to get out this from public safety.

Let me first explain what a bond and bail is.

It is to allow, release and ensure return for your hearings of the court.

I'll say that again.

Bail and bond amount.

Cash amount is to allow release and then return to your hearings.

So if you set an amount that is unattainable, you're not allowing release.

And if someone is dangerous and poses a threat to public safety.

How about we just keep them pretrial with no bond?

So what amount will make you safe if if it's if a defendant, A, is charged with attempted murder and the bond is $100,000 and a defendant as wealthy and defendant B is charged with attempted murder and the bond is $100,000 and he makes $25,000 a year, this guy can get out on $100,000.

This one cannot get out.

And yet they're charged with the same crime.

So are we safer then, because that $100,000 he got out?

What amount would make someone safe?

The the analysis of whether someone is posing a threat to public safety and whether they should be held is at the time of setting bond or not.

But once a judge decides, yes, sure, you're bailable by cash bail, then that amount is to allow release.

If you certain amount.

When he asks the public, well, how much is enough will to make you feel safe.

And if the answer is enough not to let him out, then that's not bail.

And just for follow us, the final thing, the fact that they use that as a dog whistle, put it on the ballot, use the most simple language when when when particular members of our elected officials want something is in simple ballot language.

Should judges be allowed to consider public safety when setting bail amount as contrast to the language that they put in for some of the other things that they don't want?

So if you were in a coma, you'd vote yes for that.

I explained to people that that that should have been that that's not what it meant.

And if we were wrong in that decision, then why did there have to be a constitutional amendment?

I want to ask both of you to weigh in.

I'll ask you, Justice Donnelly, since you were on the court and wrote a concurring opinion here.

I wrote the concurring opinion.

It's interesting that they would have such harsh words on a one on one interview with you, but where are they Here to talk about that right now, because I would like to talk to my opponent about that because I wrote the concurring opinion that said, if someone's a threat to public safety, you should have a hearing and hold them with no bond.

Don't set it as some astronomical amount that you think they can't make.

And she doesn't have a really good response to that.

And that's why she's not here and she doesn't want to talk.

But if you want to talk about public safety, let's talk about an effort that I led in 2016 to eliminate what I call factually baseless pleas.

These usually happen in Cuyahoga County, Common Pleas court or Common Pleas court throughout the state of Ohio, where someone is charged with a serious sex crime like rape.

And if you have the right lawyer and the judge in, the prosecutor's willing to go along with it, you go in the back room and you allow them to plead to a crime that has nothing to do with rape, an outcome that a jury could never produce.

A lot of times they they plea these cases to a crime known as aggravated assault.

In fact, I have data from Hamilton County that has two cases on my opponent's docket that I would like to ask her about, but she never shows up and I never get to ask her about those cases such.

Forbes Again, you weren't on the court when this ruling came out, but what are your thoughts?

My thoughts on it is, are if you want it.

It's a great irony.

Let me say it's a great irony that the the people who recognize that dangerous criminals should under no circumstances be given an opportunity to be released pretrial, which is what Justice Stewart and Justice Donnelly just said are the ones being tagged as soft on crime, whereas the alternate position is all you have to do is pay a sum of money and then you can get out.

That is soft on crime.

Hard on crime and protective of the community is making the assessment that says under no circumstances may you be released pretrial.

Just it's ironic the way it's been recast.

We're going to go to audience questions here in just a moment.

So be thinking of questions.

And if you're watching on the livestream, please feel free to share your questions.

But I want to ask you before we do that, we often hear the phrase legislating from the bench.

So I want to ask all three of you, what does that mean to you?

And I'll start with you, Judge Forbes.

I think legislating from the bench is when you try to achieve an outcome that doesn't naturally flow from the law as it exists.

So I am opposed to legislating from the bench.

I don't believe that that is the job of a jurist and as a court of appeals judge.

And when I'm on the Supreme Court, I will have a tool available to me when I disagree with the way a law is written, I will have the opportunity to write a dissent, for example, or perhaps I agree with an outcome, but disagree with the law.

For some reason I can write a concurring opinion in which I point out that this needs to be changed because there's a problem that that flows from or that I see flowing from the law.

But as a judge, my job is to apply the law.

It is not to create new laws.

So legislating from the bench is creating new laws to achieve a particular outcome.

I won't do that.

That's Justice Stewart.

Sure.

Our jobs as jurors is to say what the law is.

You know, not what it should be.

And and as Judge Forbes says, the beauty about being an appellate court judge or a Supreme Court justice is we do get to write about it.

There are times we have to make decisions and vote on a judgment based on what the law says.

And we hold our nose doing it.

And that's where we get to write about.

This is an injustice.

Or maybe the legislature did not intend this, but this is the outcome of results.

So, you know, I'll say my opponent probably hours, but I'll just say focus on line.

Well, we'll use the catch phrases, the typical legislate from the bench and liberal activist judges, you know, all those sort of words that are dog whistles.

And I implore him to just show up anywhere with me.

A street corner candidate's forum, an editorial board, anywhere, and just discuss the substance of our of our our candidacies.

And he won't do that because, again, it's hiding behind the catch phrases of liberal activist judges and is hiding behind party affiliation on the ballot so that there does not have to be any offer to the voters of why he someone who Ohio voters have never elected to a judicial seat ever thinks he should be elected to one now and also be elected to one and have me removed from the bench.

Just one reason why the Supreme Court is better served with him on it than than my being on it.

And it won't show up.

It's just say because you're a liberal activist judge.

Well, okay, I'm also between Aquarius and Pisces, too.

I don't know if that matters.

Justice Donnelly Sure.

When I was fortunate to win a seat in 2019, I sat down with my clerks.

And as judges, we're all we all have our biases.

And I told them, Look, the law is the law I never want to be accused of engaging.

And as Judge Forbes said, result oriented analysis.

What's the result that I want and this And how do I find a pathway no matter how ridiculous?

So I wrote the dissent in the chicken in the boneless chicken case, and that got lots of laughs from late night comedians.

But in actuality, it's a very serious case because the gentleman involved in that case was severely injured, life altering injuries, and he was seeking compensation for his medical bills that he incurred.

And what the law says is that if reasonable people could differ, could differ as to whether to expect a bone in a boneless chicken wing, then that's an issue of fact that should be decided by a jury.

Your right to a trial by jury is in the Ohio Constitution and the federal Constitution.

So that should have gone to a jury.

I never said that someone should be held negligent, that would be determined there.

What have they done in terms of legislating from the bench?

They have immunized an entire industry and people at risk, children who are fed chicken tenders.

You now must expect that there might be a bone in there that could severely injure them, and that's what they did.

The legislature could have done that shouldn't be done by a majority of the court.

Let's include some audience questions now for livestream audience or those just joining.

I'm Karen Kasler, Statehouse bureau chief for Ohio Public Radio and Television.

We are here with three of the six candidates running for the three open seats on the Ohio Supreme Court this November.

We have going on order Michael Donley, justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio, Melody Stewart, Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio, and Lisa Forbes, judge of the eighth District Court of Appeals with the state of Ohio.

We welcome questions from everybody sitting club members, guests, those joining our live stream at City Club, Dawg.

If you'd like to text a question for the candidates, please text it to 3305415794.

And City Club staff will try to work it into the program.

So let's go ahead with the first question.

Good afternoon.

I'm so glad that the City club was able to have you here.

I've been doing some presentations on Project 2025 and it just has a whole lot of stuff that is just outrageous.

One of the things it calls for is warrantless searches to be able to go into homes with no search warrant but from a chemical was giving a presentation feels a violation of the first or Fourth Amendment calls for police immunity.

Getting rid of consent decrees is just a whole lot of stuff that would hurt a lot of people.

So my question is, and I'm not asking you to be, you know, fortune tellers or anything, but just in position that you are.

If that were to happen, do you think people in Ohio would be able to go to the eventually end up at the Ohio Supreme Court trying to undo those warrantless searches and and the, you know, phone taps with no permission from the from the jury or a judge or anything?

Do you think that the Ohio Supreme Court would have any kind of power and being able to undo that kind of thing once they start?

So if these kind of ideas are implemented, I'm envisioning another country than the one that I've grown up.

And, you know, when we when we sing the national anthem, we talk about does that flag still wave over the land of the free is our freedoms that are enshrined in the Bill of Rights, the right to be protected against unreasonable searches and seizures.

You need independent courts to give those words meaning and to enforce those rights.

That's what courts are there to do to resolve disputes and protect those rights.

There's a lot of rights that people are concerned about.

Workers rights, reproductive rights were just enshrined into the the Ohio Constitution.

And look, listen to the rhetoric of our opponents out there when when they're asked about this, they don't say what we say.

We'll protect your rights.

They say we will apply the law as written, brought to you by the same gang that bought your boneless chicken wings packed with bones.

Beware.

Stuart Forbes Anything that challenges as a concept, a constitutional right could make its way to the courts without questions.

We obviously can't say what we would, how it would rule or what we rule.

We don't even know what the issue might be.

But but keeping in mind a brief civics lesson at the trial court where Mike Donnelly served.

You have a right to appeal a decision from a trial court.

The jury got it wrong.

The judge was wrong in letting evidence in or keeping evidence out.

You think the judge made a mistake?

You have a right to appeal to the Court of Appeals where I serve for 12 years and where where Judge Forbes currently serves, you have an absolute right to get there.

You don't have a right to get to the Ohio Supreme Court.

We have narrow confines and that take our court cases in dealing with constitutional issues is one of them cases dealing with felony matters and cases that are of great general interest or great public importance.

So we get to pick and choose the cases that come in.

So if you don't have a court, in my opinion, a court that is diverse, intellectually diverse, geographically diverse, educationally diverse background, diverse things that that that some justices might think is of great importance and great public interest, some others might not think that are.

And so that's part of why I think the makeup of the court needs to be as diverse as possible, certainly not all one party or or another.

So we get that would seem to be an issue that would readily be accepted by all seven members of the court, something dealing with the constitutionality of rights.

But that's not necessarily so as far as I'm the I'm not as familiar with Project 2025 particulars as you are.

So I not really I think that something like that that you were just describing would require a constitutional amendment to the United States Constitution to get rid of what happened as well, which won't happen.

Right.

They're just going to say which which is very, very difficult.

Remember, the United States Constitution is 27 amendments.

The Ohio Constitution is 173, 174 on the ballot this year, you know, if it passes.

So I think I think that it's concerning what the topics you just raised, because they are fundamental rights are have for the last 237 years been considered to be fundamental rights and that they would be in question.

But I would have to see how it came forward to see exactly what what was going on.

Let's have another question.

Thank you.

It's good to see you.

Our esteemed jurist.

So Article one, which I believe is our bill of Rights, the Ohio Constitution has 22 bills of rights.

And in contrast, the federal Bill of Rights, which only has ten.

The 22nd is the newest, and it was passed last year by the citizens of Ohio by overwhelming majority in response to a regime under which ten year old girls were chased out of the state to seek medical care and women were threatened with danger if they dared to miscarry during a miscarriage.

So now we live in a state where reproductive freedoms are enshrined in the Constitution by the citizens, not by the court.

So I'm not asking your judgment on that amendment, but the citizens of Ohio pass amendment into the in the Constitution.

When I was a kid and most of my adult life, I thought a court would abide by, in fact, one of its jobs, The Supreme Court's job was to enforce the Constitution.

We need to get to the question.

Yes.

So the question what I'm hearing is from your opponents is that there's there's intimations that they would see the Supreme Court as a tool which to nullify that amendment to overthrow the the will of the people and the amendment of the Constitution.

We hear this from Republican legislators.

QUESTION So my question is sorry, my question is, what is your stand on protecting the Constitution as a justice of the Supreme Court wants to start?

I'll start as President Andrew Jackson said years ago, those words and that in the Constitution are a mere bubble and mean nothing unless they're enforced by a independent judiciary.

And that's what we are sworn to protect, regardless of our position on this.

You know, it shows you the chaos that has been thrown into this country by the Dobbs decision.

You had Justice Alito say this is a matter for the states and and women are not without electoral power.

And what did the Ohio legislature do in response to that?

First of all, they tried to raise the the the change, the rules in change and changing the amendment by raising it to 60%.

They held, in my opinion, was an illegal August election in order to do that and that and they the voters let them know know how they feel about that.

They enshrined then they enshrined those rights back into the Constitution.

But the fact is, those rights cannot be those rights are still at issue if you don't have an independent judiciary willing to protect those rights and that's that's what we will do.

And interestingly, our opponents have always warned this right to life endorsement on their sleeve.

In 2022, they were endorsed pre-primary without primary opponents.

In that cycle, they didn't endorse until September this year.

Why?

Why are they not highlighting that that right to life endorsement that they've been so proud to it to right to to wear on their sleeve?

It's interesting.

All three Republicans are endorsed by Ohio Right to life.

You folks are all endorsed by planned parent of Planned Parenthood of Ohio, a judge.

Judge Forbes, Justice Stewart I'll just say that one of the things that that justice I was just referencing is the idea that that the Article one, Section 22 of the Constitution, it is going to be coming through the courts in all likelihood.

Now, we don't know for sure whether any of those questions are going to come to the Supreme Court.

But we do know that the courts are involved in this, and that's because after 57% of Ohio voters voted to enshrine reproductive freedom in the Constitution, superseding then any statutes are legislature did not repeal any of the existing laws on the books.

The courts could be taken out of this discussion if the laws that are presently on the books were repealed by the legislature.

But the legislature isn't doing that, preferring the courts to do that work to say which laws are unconstitutional in light of the reproductive Freedom Amendment passed.

And so I think that that does that does beg a question why why are we doing that, I guess I don't know really.

But as I said at the at the outset, I understand how it's the rules of interpretation are supposed to be applied.

I do it every day as a judge on the court of appeals, and that is where the law is.

And the words of a of a provision are clear and unambiguous.

They are to be applied as written.

If there is an ambiguity, then the rules of interpretation get brought to bear, and that includes if a word needs to be defined, that we look to things like standard tools, like dictionaries and precedent.

And I will do that to give voice to the intent behind the provision.

As to Stuart and how much that that was.

Just so I can pass on that one.

Another question.

Hi.

Thank you all for being here.

My question has to do with the party distinction on the ballot.

I had the privilege of voting yesterday and I noticed that party distinction is only for the Supreme Court candidates, not for trial court judges that we also voted for.

So my question is twofold.

One being what is the the powers that be that allowed for party distinction?

And generally, what is their argument in favor of that?

Obviously, Ohio is a predominantly Republican state and it's easier for them to win, but that's not necessarily something they should say out loud.

So I'm curious, one, what their argument is and to why that distinction doesn't apply to all levels of trial appellate and Supreme Court, even though they're elected officials, It does apply to appellate court justices as well as majority does not apply to trial level.

Let me ask Judge Forbes, since you are on the appellate court.

So what what is the rationale behind that?

Are you doesn't it?

You know, it's it's mystifying.

The explanation at the time was that something about people weren't really interested in knowing party affiliation behind of their trial court judges.

It either it's meaningful information or it's not.

I don't understand this this distinction that's been made.

I will say from a practical standpoint, traditionally the judges who run for Supreme Court are judges who have served on appellate benches, not always.

But if you if there's perhaps that had to do with it, trying to trying to get rid of some qualified appellate jurists, I don't know.

I can tell you that the first year that that law was in effect, which was in 22, numerous judges lost appellate court judges lost incumbent appellate court judges, lost their seats in in communities all over the state.

Republican lost in cities, and Democrats lost in more rural areas.

And that's a pity for the state of Ohio.

We lost good, experienced jurists.

Why?

I don't get it.

And as just Forbes said, for their purported reason, was that to prevent voter falloff.

But it's purely about power and outcomes that they desire.

And that's what they're doing.

And there's evidence that the press can can go to where not all Republicans, before they put this party label, were thrilled with this.

In fact, others, my colleague, the chief justice, Chief Justice Kennedy, she always enjoyed getting a lot of Democratic votes in the cities because her name was Kennedy.

And if you go into the congressional record or the legislative record when this was being considered, you'll Representative Bill Seitz go to the people and say, would you consider a motion to have the chief justice race, which she was running in against Justice Brunner?

Would consider a motion to have that go, be nonpartisan and have the other judges partizan.

And they're like, We could do that.

But how do stick with our plan that this is about transparency?

And it didn't.

But there is a plan afoot to gerrymander the appellate districts as well.

They tried to put this into place.

All the judges know about it.

And they they want to break up the first District, which they consider producing too many liberal outcomes.

And this is the facts.

Everybody knows it.

They just don't want to talk about it out loud.

And my position on that, too, because my colleague, Justice Pat DeWine, wrote an article that said it's a good start to put party affiliation on the ballot, and I couldn't hold back.

So I wrote the article in response to that saying, you know, how is it that all the judges in the state of Ohio take the same oath?

We all have six year terms.

The Supreme Court and the appellate court, We don't see people in our courts, you know, externals and lawyers excluded.

But, you know, we don't see parties, trial court judges have juries, trial court judges see the parties, defendants in their parties in a case.

Trial court judges have family members in the court.

Those are the people who every day terminate your parental rights sentence.

People to prison rule on your personal injury cases.

Those are the people who see people every day.

And to say that people don't want to know the affiliation of the hundreds of trial court judges across the state, there are only seven of us on the Supreme Court, and there is of the try and get you to sit down to.

Okay.

Well, in this case, you set out to say that there is only seven of us on the Supreme Court and there's 69 appellate court judges.

So people only want to know who those 76 judges are, as opposed to the hundreds of trial court judges across the state.

It was done because the state of Ohio has voted present and voted in.

Someone said we're, you know, predominantly Republican.

We are not.

Ohio is primarily unaffiliated voters.

The registered voters in Ohio are primarily unaffiliated.

This was done because Ohio has gone Republican in the last two presidential elections.

I guarantee you with the super enjoy this legislature.

If the state of Ohio had been voting Democrat in less than two years or Barack Obama was elected president, there was no talk to changing party affiliation, putting party affiliation on the ballot.

But now that there's a momentum, a swing toward voting Republican, they did that.

It was also convenient that it started in 2022 when Governor DeWine was running for reelection and his son, Pat DeWine, was running for reelection.

So now you put party affiliation on the ballot and you move the races up so that or right after the executive all done by design, I'll end with saying there would be no way that my opponent would be giving up a seat of incumbency to leave his seat and run for mind.

If I were a Republican, would he be running against me?

Absolutely not.

Well, if I was a Republican and Mike Donnelly was only a Democrat, would he be the switch over to Mike Donnelly?

If we were both Republicans, would he run for his own seat?

So why would you give up your place of incumbency to retain your seat, to then go against a more experienced jurist If you didn't feel that party affiliation was the end all, be all for your race.

And that's why they put it on strictly political reasons.

And I'll just say, if anybody in this audience agrees that we shouldn't have party affiliation on the ballot, encourage you to vote for me, because I'll I'll be the one that will flip the court and then we can perhaps the legislature will reconsider the benefits and value of party affiliation on the ballot.

And it should be clarified that, yes, Justice Donnelly and Justice Stewart are running for full six year terms and Judge Forbes is running for the rest of what was just a share in Kennedy's term before she became chief justice.

And that's the seat that Joe Deters was appointed to.

So just to clarify all of that.

One more I think we have time for.

So I actually think, Judge Forbes, you might have answered this a little bit already, but in many cases they come down to interpretation of certain terms that may be vague or ambiguous, like you were mentioning.

You know what comes to mind, the ballot issue, one ballot language.

There's been plenty of cases at the U.S. Supreme Court as well, where this is an issue.

And so how do you what sources do you use to resolve that, that ambiguity or that vagueness?

Judge Ward, you mentioned a couple of them, but I was just curious if you could all elaborate on how you resolve those issues.

I'll defer to the two who have recently ruled on that very question.

So I wrote the dissent on the issue on ballot language.

And you know, that language is supposed to be neutral and let the parties out there who think it's a good idea or a bad idea, get out and campaign for yes or no.

But it's not supposed to be.

The law dictates that it's supposed to be non advocate one side or the other.

And when you say that this this effort to injury merit ban gerrymandering actually requires it.

It's confusing people.

I received a call from someone in Washington County just the other day and it described a an elderly gentleman coming in and he's reading the ballot language and and he says, hon, why do we have a yes sign in our front yard?

Because it and that's wrong.

You know, we should that we should be following the law and have a neutral language.

But we don't we don't have a majority.

So we couldn't prevent that.

And this is what you're left at with a with a judiciary that's willing to confuse that the are a majority that's willing to confuse the electorate.

Stuart, there's a statute that says, you know, it's disappointing to me who takes a great deal of pride in public service to have the chief elections officer of our state engage in so much partizan politics.

The statute says the statute says his job is to you were not you're supposed to bring on ballot language.

He in the ballot board that is not misleading, fraudulent, deceitful and not designed to sway voters to vote for or against amendment.

Just tell voters what it is.

And as always, voters are educated, informed, intelligent people.

Tell them what it is and let them decide whether they should have it.

You can always tell when when politics is coming to play because they will then distorted.

I've always said even before I was an elected official, if someone has to stoke fear into you about something about voting for their position or voting for them, you should beware and not vote for that.

And so this is is what they do, hoping that the voters don't pay attention and just listen to what's being said.

As I agreed in the dissent, every aspect of the law, the duties of the ballot board and the secretary of state were violated in that.

And it's always suspect, too, when you have ballot language that's even longer than the amendment proposed amendment itself.

That's what happens in reproductive Freedom Amendment.

And that's what happened with this amendment, too.

But, you know, some people view it as a rubber stamp.

You know, we're supposed to be a great system of checks and balances with the judiciary and the executive branch and the legislative branch.

It's questionable whether we've got those checks and balances there.

Well, thank you all very much.

I appreciate it.

Let's give thanks to Justice Donnelly, just to Stuart and Doug Forbes for joining us here at the City Club today.

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Up next, at the city club on Friday, October 5th, this coming Friday, we will hear from Vanita Gupta, former special assistant to the president for labor and workers on the Domestic Policy Council, which is part of the Biden White House.

She will be discussing the role of coalitions and partnerships in rebuilding the economy.

You can get tickets to this forum and learn more about other forums at City Club, dawg.

That brings us to the end of this forum.

Thank you once again to Justice Donnelly.

Justice Stewart and Judge Forbes and all the members of the City club for joining us.

I'm Karen Casler.

This forum is now adjourned for information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to City Club.

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