Just hours before a law banning foreign nationals from contributing to ballot issue campaigns was set to take effect, a federal judge blocked part of it because it violates their First Amendment rights.
Judge Michael Watson, of the Southern District of Ohio, has ruled that the state can’t enforce the law against foreign nationals – including lawful permanent residents, also known as green card holders – who donate to ballot issue campaigns.
Watson wrote that the political spending of lawful permanent residents "does not carry a risk of undue foreign influence," and noted that LPRs can serve in the military.
"It would be absurd to allow (or force) LPRs to fight and die for this country, on the one hand, and to prohibit them from making incidental expenditures for a yard-sign that expresses a view on state or local politics, on the other," Watson wrote. "So, if the U.S. Federal Government trusts LPRs to put U.S. interests first in the military (of all places), how could this Court hold that it does not trust them to promote U.S. interests in their political spending? It cannot."
The lawsuit was filed against Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and the state by OPAWL – Building AAPI Feminist Leadership, a coalition of Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women and nonbinary Ohioans. They were represented by the Elias Group, which was founded by Democratic lawyer Marc Elias and specializes in election and voting related litigation.
The law passed as House Bill 1 in a special session of the legislature in late spring, which had been called by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.
The Republican sponsor of House Bill 1 had warned on the floor against including green card holders in the legislation after it was added to the bill, and it led him to vote against it.
"I warned my colleagues not to overstep their bounds and that they were jeopardizing the entire bill by doing so. My colleagues chose not to listen to me. At least the Republican ones largely chose not to listen to me," said Rep. Bill Seitz (R-Cincinnati). "So the ultimate irony is, a bill that started out as an attempt to rein in foreign money in our elections will end up having no impact because the statute that was enacted has been deemed to be largely unconstitutional. So at the end of the day, their overreach ended up getting us nowhere."
"I don't think anybody is worried about the average green card holder," DeWine said in June, soon after the ban passed. "But we are worried about somebody who's got enough money to to tilt the scales in an election in the state of Ohio and who can't vote. But they can come in here and they don't even live here, but they can come in here and dump a bunch of money."
DeWine had also asked for that special session for lawmakers to pass a separate bill to extend the deadline for presidential candidate certification, as the Democratic National Committee's convention was set for after Ohio's 90-day deadline.
House Bills 1 and 2 took effect on Sunday.
