COLUMBUS, Ohio — A federal judge has blocked a new law that would ban foreigners and green card holders from contributing to voting campaigns in Ohio, saying the law would curtail constitutionally protected freedom of speech.
U.S. District Judge Michael Watson wrote Saturday that the government has an interest in preventing foreign influence on state election issues, but that the law as written falls short and instead impinges on the First Amendment rights of lawful permanent residents.
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed the measure on June 2, and it was set to go into effect Sunday. A prominent Democratic law firm filed a lawsuit saying noncitizens would be threatened with investigation, criminal prosecution and mandatory fines if they even indicated they planned to make election-related expenditures or contributions.
Watson said lawful permanent residents can serve in the military and, depending on their age, must register for selective service. Therefore, the judge said, it would be “absurd” to allow or compel such people “to fight and die for this country” while prohibiting them from “incidental expenditures for a yard sign expressing an opinion on state or local politics.”
“Where is the danger of people who are more concerned with foreign interests than with the U.S. military? Nowhere,” he wrote. “So, if the U.S. federal government trusts (such citizens) to put U.S. interests first in the military (of all places), how can this Court find that it does not trust them to advance U.S. interests in their political spending? It cannot.”
Not only is the speech of lawfully resident foreign nationals constitutionally protected, but so is the right of American citizens “to hear the political speech of those foreign nationals,” Watson said. Seeking a narrow solution without changing the court’s statutes, he said he would bar officials from seeking civil or criminal liability for alleged violations of Ohio law based on the definition of a “foreign national.”
Republicans in the Statehouse defended the ban after voters last year soundly rejected their positions on ballot measures including protecting abortion access in the state constitution, reversing a bid to make it harder to pass future constitutional amendments and legalizing recreational marijuana. Political committees involved in the first two attempts took money from entities that had received donations from Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss. However, a direct path from Wyss to the Ohio campaigns is untraceable under campaign finance laws that are not addressed in Ohio law. Wyss lives in Wyoming.
John Fortney, a spokesman for Ohio Senate Republican Speaker Matt Huffman, argued that the lawsuit’s filing shows Democrats’ reliance on donations from wealthy foreigners and accused the progressive left of an “un-American sellout to foreign influence.”
A decision to include green card holders in the ban was made on the House floor, against the advice of the chamber’s No. 3 Republican, State Representative Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati attorney. Seitz cited a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that suggested extending such bans to green card holders would raise “substantial questions” about constitutionality.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of OPAWL – Building AAPI Feminist Leadership, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, a German citizen and her husband who live in Cleveland, and a Canadian citizen who lives in Silver Lake, a suburb of Kent. OPAWL is an organization of Asian, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and non-binary women in Ohio. The lawsuit also argued that the law violated the plaintiffs’ rights under the 14th Amendment, but the judge said he would not hear their equal protection arguments because they would likely prevail over First Amendment arguments.
