Since introducing a plan last year to make it harder to amend the Ohio Constitution, supporters have insisted their proposal was an issue-neutral effort to protect the state’s founding document.
But advocates for a new 60% threshold for constitutional amendments have repeatedly hewed toward a variety of very specific issues: Firearms groups worried about future gun regulations and business and restaurant groups worried about a minimum wage increase, but the loudest in the chorus were organizations fretting about a proposed abortion rights amendment.
The 60% proposal’s House sponsor pointed to abortion rights and anti-gerrymandering efforts. Senate President Matt Huffman drew an explicit link between an August election and undermining an abortion amendment. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose recently said the issue is, “100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”
There was one person, however — and really just one — who made a case in testimony in the terms that sponsors publicly asserted. One person who presented a kind of legal and philosophical framework for their good governance arguments — University of Toledo law professor Lee Strang.
Strang is not just an expert in originalist constitutional theory, he’s also deeply embedded in the pro-life movement.
The first bid at imposing a 60% threshold for constitutional amendments last winter was notable for its lack of public support. For weeks sponsors claimed...
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