Ballot petition signature collection. (Stock photo by WEWS.)
Ohio advocates have been approved to start collecting signatures to put a marriage equality amendment and an equal rights discrimination protections amendment on the ballot.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost certified two separate constitutional amendment proposals Friday: one would remove a provision from the state Constitution that prohibits same-sex marriage, and the other would prohibit discrimination by state and local governments because of race, sex, pregnancy status, sexual orientation, disability, or other attributes.
Ohio Equal Rights, which is running both amendment campaigns, was required to put forward two proposals instead of one that focused on all LGBTQ+ rights. Republicans on the Ohio Ballot Board said that the same-sex marriage issue was fundamentally different than the discrimination protections.
In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex couples have the fundamental right to marry, but the Ohio Constitution has never been updated to reflect that.
This citizen-led proposal would repeal the provision saying that “only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this state and its political subdivisions.”
In 2022, Justice Clarence Thomas said that the Supreme Court of the United States should reconsider landmark cases such as Obergefell. This helped push forward this amendment, organizers said in July.
Because they already met with the ballot board in July, they were given the go-ahead by politicians that they wouldn’t need to return if it was split up as the board recommended, one of the Ohio Equal Rights team members said Friday.
The team did not say which ballot they are aiming for, but they will need to collect about 415,000 signatures for each amendment, they said.
Follow WEWS statehouse reporter Morgan Trau on X and Facebook.
This article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland.
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