Elect Jamison, Zayas to the Supreme Court

It's time for a change at the Ohio Supreme Court. The two incumbent Republican justices seeking reelection this year, Pat DeWine and Pat Fischer, have, in our view, made partisan rulings in the redistricting fight that has dominated the Supreme Court's docket for the past year. Both insisted during separate endorsement interviews that they were following the law when they sided with Republicans, who gerrymandered Ohio's congressional and state legislative districts. We disagree. They ignored the clear will of the people, who voted overwhelmingly in 2015 and 2018 to curtail gerrymandering and produce maps that better reflected Ohio's political makeup. Justice Sharon Kennedy, a Republican now running to replace outgoing Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, also would have allowed the GOP to gerrymander away. (We endorsed Kennedy's Democratic opponent, Justice Jennifer Brunner, in that race.) O'Connor, a Republican, joined the court's three Democrats to strike down the gerrymandered maps as unconstitutional. Republican lawmakers considered impeaching her before apparently deciding to wait until her term was up and hope they would get a friendlier Republican majority. DeWine and Fischer have made clear in their rulings that they would be part of such a majority. Fortunately, they face a pair of highly qualified Democratic challengers, whom voters would be well served to elect. Marilyn Zayas, a judge on the 1st District Court of Appeals, is challenging DeWine, while Terri Jamison, a judge on the 10th District Court of Appeals, is challenging Fischer. Zayas, 57, is on her second career, having been an information technology manager before becoming a lawyer. After law school, she took a job with the Hamilton County Public Defender's Officer and later made the switch to private practice. In 2016, she challenged an appointee to the appeals court and won a seat. She was reelected two years later. Jamison, 63, also came to the law after a very different start to her career. She worked in a coal mine before becoming an office manager and later starting her own insurance agency. After graduating from law school, she went to work for the Franklin County Public Defender's Office. She also was a lawyer in private practice before winning a seat on the Franklin County Domestic Relations Court in 2012. She was elected to the appeals court two years ago. Both women impressed us in separate endorsement interviews as highly capable, fluent in the law and devoted to impartiality. Both support creation of a statewide sentencing database. They didn't say how they would rule in the redistricting fight, but we believe they would enforce the Ohio Constitution if elected. Jamison rightly displayed a commitment to finding ways to counter bias in the criminal justice system. Zayas spoke passionately about restoring the public's faith in the impartiality of the courts. In a departure from previous years, party affiliations for candidates running for the Supreme Court and appeals courts appear on the ballot this fall. It was a win for transparency. Nevertheless, voters should expect justices to set aside their personal politics if elected and follow the law. Both DeWine and Fischer are experienced jurists who should know that, which made their decision to appear at a rally featuring former President Donald Trump and Republican U.S. Senate candidate JD Vance disappointing. They defended it as legitimate campaigning, but Trump and Vance have both claimed, falsely, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump. Those who might be called upon to sit in judgment of elections disputes should have known to give them a wide berth. Fischer, 64, had a lengthy career in private practice and served as president of the Ohio State Bar Association before being elected to the 1st District Court of Appeals in 2010. He won a seat on the Supreme Court in 2016. We endorsed him in that race. While Fischer continued to impress us with his legal acumen, we can't overlook his decisions in the redistricting case, nor comments he's made about abortion and the legal theory of substantive due process, which undergirded the right to abortion that was lost when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade. DeWine, 54, was a member of Cincinnati City Council and a Hamilton County commissioner before being elected to that county's Common Pleas Court in 2008. He won a seat on the 1st District Court of Appeals in 2012 and was elected to the Supreme Court in 2016. We didn't endorse him in that contest. We believe DeWine committed a grave error when he refused to recuse himself from the redistricting cases even though his father, Gov. Mike DeWine, was in the middle of the mess. The elder DeWine is a member of the Republican-controlled Ohio Redistricting Commission and signed off on congressional maps approved by the GOP-dominated state legislature. The younger DeWine defended his decision to remain on the redistricting cases during an endorsement interview by saying that recusal rules for judges only came into play when a judicial officer had a "deep personal interest" in the case. He contended that because his father was only one member of the seven-member Redistricting Commission, he wasn't required to recuse himself. When it came to deciding whether to hold members of the commission in contempt, he said he stayed out of it. The state's judicial rules call for judges and justices to avoid not only impropriety, but the appearance of impropriety. Plenty of people, including us, felt it was improper for a justice to be hearing a case in which his father was a central player. Voters should elect Jamison and Zayas to the Ohio Supreme Court.