Ohio Could Become the 5th State to End Qualified Immunity — If 413,000 Signatures Land by July

The Ohio Coalition to End Qualified Immunity is racing the clock to put a constitutional amendment before voters on November 3. After years of legal battles with the Attorney General, the question of whether government officials can be held accountable for violating Ohioans' constitutional rights may finally reach the ballot.

What Is Qualified Immunity?

Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine, established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967, that shields government employees from civil lawsuits unless their conduct violates "clearly established" law that any "reasonable person" would have known about. In practice, courts have applied this standard so narrowly that government officials are routinely shielded from accountability even in cases involving serious misconduct — including excessive force, wrongful detention, and violations of constitutional rights.

The doctrine is most commonly associated with police misconduct, but its scope is far broader than law enforcement. According to research from the Institute for Justice, only about 21% of qualified immunity cases involve police. The remaining 79% involve other government actors: school administrators, prison officials, public health officers, code enforcement agents, building inspectors, and other state and local employees.

What the Amendment Would Do

The proposed amendment would add a new Section 23 to the Ohio Constitution's Bill of Rights. Its provisions are sweeping.

It would allow any person to bring a civil lawsuit against the state, political subdivisions, public employees, or independent contractors acting on their behalf for alleged violations of constitutional rights under the Ohio Constitution. It would prohibit government actors from claiming legal immunities — including qualified immunity, sovereign immunity, and prosecutorial immunity — as defenses. It would let plaintiffs choose between a bench trial or jury trial. And if a government actor is found liable, the plaintiff could receive damages, attorney's fees, and other legal remedies.

Four states have already ended qualified immunity in some form: Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, and Nevada. If Ohio's amendment passes, it would become the fifth — and the first to do so through a citizen-initiated constitutional amendment rather than legislation.

The Legal Gauntlet

The Ohio Coalition to End Qualified Immunity (OCEQI), founded by Cynthia Brown and co-founded by Jenny Rowe, has been fighting to get this amendment before voters for years. The path has been anything but smooth.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost challenged the petition multiple times, rejecting the ballot summary language. OCEQI sued, arguing that Yost violated their First Amendment right to petition. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which in April 2025 declined to review it — effectively affirming the Sixth Circuit's ruling that OCEQI's ballot language constitutes protected political speech.

With that legal clearance, OCEQI was approved to begin collecting signatures. The Ohio Ballot Board then certified the initiative as a single ballot issue. But the delays consumed precious time. The coalition originally hoped for the 2025 ballot; they're now targeting November 3, 2026.

The signature math is daunting. OCEQI needs at least 413,488 valid signatures from Ohio registered voters, collected across a minimum number of Ohio's 88 counties, submitted by July 5, 2026. With roughly three months remaining as of this writing, the campaign is in a sprint.

The Opposition

The pushback has been fierce and organized. Attorney General Yost, who has been the amendment's most prominent opponent, argues that existing accountability mechanisms — internal discipline, criminal prosecution, and civil court — are sufficient.

Jay McDonald, president of the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police, has called the amendment "a solution in search of a problem," arguing that police officers are already held accountable through multiple channels.

Legal opponents raise more specific concerns. A detailed analysis from the law firm Reminger warns that the amendment's strict liability standard — requiring no proof of negligence or intent, only that a constitutional violation occurred — combined with uncapped damages, a six-year statute of limitations, and mandatory attorney's fees would create what they call "Ohio's biggest-ever expansion of civil claims."

The Reminger analysis warns that the amendment would affect all 800,000 public-sector employees in Ohio, from police officers to teachers to park cleanup volunteers. They argue it could lead to insurance companies withdrawing from the state, service cuts, and tax increases. Opponents also note that the amendment eliminates not just qualified immunity but also sovereign, prosecutorial, judicial, and legislative immunity — protections they argue serve fundamentally different functions.

The Case For

Proponents argue that qualified immunity has created a system where government officials face effectively no consequences for violating citizens' constitutional rights. The "clearly established law" standard requires courts to find a nearly identical prior case before allowing a lawsuit to proceed — a catch-22 that means rights can be violated repeatedly without ever becoming "clearly established."

OCEQI points to the four states that have already ended qualified immunity without the catastrophic consequences opponents predict. Colorado, the first state to act in 2020, has not seen the wave of frivolous lawsuits or government employee exodus that critics warned about.

The coalition frames the amendment as a fundamentally bipartisan issue — noting that qualified immunity reform has drawn support from organizations across the political spectrum, including the Cato Institute (libertarian), the ACLU (progressive), and the Institute for Justice (libertarian/conservative). The argument that government officials should not have special legal protections that ordinary citizens do not enjoy resonates with both civil libertarians on the right and civil rights advocates on the left.

The November 3 Convergence

If OCEQI collects enough signatures and the amendment makes the ballot, it will share the November 3 ballot with the governor's race (Ramaswamy vs. Acton), the Senate special election (Husted vs. Brown), and whatever House and local races are on tap. That combination could create unusual cross-pressures in Ohio's electorate.

A qualified immunity amendment could drive turnout among voters who might not otherwise show up for a midterm — particularly younger voters, activists, and communities disproportionately affected by government misconduct. Whether that benefits Democrats, Republicans, or neither party down-ballot is an open question. What's clear is that it adds another volatile element to an already combustible Ohio election cycle.

The clock is ticking. July 5 is 99 days away.

Ohioans who want to sign the petition or volunteer with the signature collection effort can visit oceqi.org.