On April 26, Colleen M. O’Toole, an Ohio State Court of Appeals judge, filed a federal lawsuit to overturn some Ohio restrictions on candidates for Justice of the State Supreme Court. O’Toole plans to seek the Republican nomination for that office in the March 2016 primary. She challenges several rules: (1) she cannot legally raise money for her campaign until November 9, 2015; (2) her campaign literature and signs must include the words, “Appeals Court Judge 11th district” if she refers to herself as a judge at all; (3) her campaign signs, if they use the words “elect”, “vote”, or “for” must be in the same size font as the words “Ohio Supreme Court”; (4) her campaign literature can’t use the word “judge” as a verb; (5) various restrictions on how she can personally ask for campaign contributions.
The case is O’Toole v O’Connor, s.d., 2:15cv-1446. It was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge James L. Graham, a Reagan appointee. O’Toole is one of four Republicans running for three seats. Her complaint points out that her three opponents already have sizeable campaign treasuries, because they ran for office before and retained some of the contributions from past campaigns. One of her incumbent opponents already has $250,826 and he is free to spend it now, wheeas O’Connor so far only has $119 and she can’t raise more until November. Here is the Complaint.
