News & Commentary

Another day, another attempt to promote government intrusion into the lives of thousands of women and their doctors. Last week, the Ohio House Health and Aging Committee snuck onto its agenda House Bill 248 (HB 248), often called the “Heartbeat Bill,” which restricts reproductive freedom and promotes poor health care practices and overreaching governance. Thursday morning, the committee rapidly heard testimony on the bill. Later the same afternoon, it was voted out of committee, entirely along party lines. This extremely invasive and controversial bill aims to ban abortions in Ohio once a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can be as early as six weeks. The bill contains no exceptions for survivors of sexual violence or incest. The bill also claims there is an exception to prevent the death or serious harm of the pregnant woman, but this exception still subjects the woman and the physician performing the abortion to government authority and review.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Olivet Institutional Baptist Church, Cleveland, Ohio
May 16, 1967
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Imagine what would happen if people of different walks of life decided that they were done with the insanity of mass incarceration and the War on Drugs. Imagine if people proclaimed that they were tired of: » Criminalizing people unnecessarily. » Tough on crime laws that do nothing to improve safety. » Spending billions on mass incarceration while schools crumble. » Separating children from their parents. » Not meeting the needs of victims of crime. » Using prisons and jails to penalize people who simply need a job or treatment. » Paying into a system that contributes to unemployment and crime. Well, now you don’t have to imagine.

What makes us feel safe in our communities? When you know your neighbors, when youth have connections to positive people, and when residents feel pride in the appearance of their street, this keeps a community safe. When men armed with assault rifles and flash grenades spill out of an armored personnel carrier in the middle of the night to break down a door searching for drugs, this has the opposite effect. Security does not come from more weapons, night vision goggles, or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles. Yet this has been the federal approach to enhancing community safety for years. Since 1997, the Defense Logistics Agency has funneled $5.1 billion of surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies through the federal 1033 program. This equipment has fueled a nationwide trend in aggressive police practices. Rather than confronting barricade or hostage situations, police SWAT teams now frequently serve search warrants, raiding homes looking for drugs.

Ever since smoke rose from the Sistine Chapel heralding Pope Francis as leader of the Roman Catholic Church, he has made headlines for addressing controversial social issues. So, it was no surprise when he recently discussed mass incarceration, he did it with the gusto politicians have never been unable to muster. Pope Francis called on, “All Christians and people of good will…to fight…for the improvement of prison conditions in respect for the human dignity of those who have been deprived of liberty.” He went on to speak out against solitary confinement, calling it torture.

Justice Paul E. Pfeifer (Columbus Dispatch, July 22, 2012)
Revenue collected from fines and court costs issued by mayor's courts goes directly to the town’s coffers. During times of economic stress, the mayor or magistrate may not be able to look past the fact that more guilty pleas equals more money for the town. Does that sound like an impartial hearing to you?

3. Oversight and Accountability

Mayor’s courts are largely unregulated. Since mayor’s courts are a product of the legislature, the Ohio Supreme Court has little authority over them. This is especially worrisome, as the ACLU of Ohio’s April 2013 report The Outskirts of Hope noted that many mayor’s courts engage in debtors’ prison, violating the law by incarcerating individuals for failure to pay fines.

For years, the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas H. Moyer advocated to abolish mayor’s courts in Ohio. Slowly, we are making progress towards that goal. Recent legislation shrank the number of mayor’s courts from 333 in 2010 to 310 in 2013. But that simply isn’t enough.

Only two states still have mayor’s courts—Ohio and Louisiana—sure sign that mayor’s courts are an outdated system that compromises the integrity of our judicial system. Ohio doesn’t need fewer mayor’s courts or fewer cases heard in mayor’s courts. We need to abolish mayor’s courts once and for all.