Sixth Circuit's Health Care Reform decision

"The political and legal future of the sweeping health care reform bill," CNN.com this morning reported, "received a big boost yesterday with the Federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruling in favor of the Obama administration and Congress, concluding a key provision in the landmark legislation was constitutional.

"The 'individual mandate,' requiring nearly all Americans to purchase health insurance by 2014 or face financial penalties," the article went on to explain, "was challenged in federal courts by a large number of individuals and groups, who said people should not be forced to purchase a product like medical coverage. The partially divided, 3-judge panel of the 6^th. Circuit disagreed, finding that the minimum coverage provision is a valid exercise of legislative power by Congress under the Commerce Clause."

The Court's opinion related that Michigan’s Eastern District Court had held that "the minimum coverage provision falls within Congress's authority under the Commerce Clause for two principal reasons: (1) the provision regulates economic decisions regarding how to pay for health care that have substantial effects on the interstate health care market; and (2) the provision is essential to the Act’s larger regulation of the interstate market for health insurance. (But) because the district court found the provision to be authorized by the Commerce Clause, it declined to address whether it was a permissible tax under the General Welfare Clause." The Sixth Circuit followed suit.

Judge Jeffrey Sutton's portion of the opinion is seeming focal. As Law.com’s article yesterday afternoon related, "he calls 'plausible' the challengers' argument that a mandate to buy medical insurance 'crosses a line between regulating action and inaction, between regulating those who have entered a market and those who have not, one that the Court and Congress have never crossed before,' but adds that the government has the better arguments.

" 'The basic policy idea,' Sutton says, 'for better or worse (and courts must assume better), is to compel individuals with the requisite income to pay now rather than later for health care… Faced with $43 billion in uncompensated care, Congress reasonably could require all covered individuals to pay for health care now so that money would be available later to pay for all care as the need arises. Call this mandate what you will -- an affront to individual autonomy or an imperative of national health care -- it meets the requirement of regulating activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.'"

Sixth Circuit opinion

[ Articles from New York Times and Wall Street Journal ]

Ohio consumer sales-practice violation alternative

Rep. Ron Young and Lynn Slaby, last Tuesday introduced legislation that they say will speed up resolution of lawsuits filed by consumers accusing businesses of violating consumer sales-practices laws. They are supported by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine in the effort.

The Columbus Dispatch reported that "Under the proposal, businesses that have been sued by a consumer can make a 'cure offer' to the court within 30 days of the filing of the lawsuit. The 'cure' would include a fix to the problem and up to $1,500 in attorney's fees …. If the court ultimately decides in the consumers' favor in an amount that is higher than the original cure offer, the court could still award the consumer triple damages and attorney's fees, but if the court awards less than the business' cure offer, the consumer wouldn't get attorneys fees or damages under consumer-protection laws, which call for triple the amount of actual damages and are similar to punitive damages."

Text of HB 275

Immigration "green card lottery" suit

California immigration lawyer, Ken White, has sued the State Department after the agency revoked the results of some 22,000 winners of a green card lottery who thought they had hit the immigration jackpot, CNN.com reported Tuesday.

"The so-called diversity visa lottery allows foreigners to submit applications on the State Department website every year," the article said, and "about 15 million people worldwide applied in the most recent drawing, about 50,000 of whom are randomly picked and get a quick path to permanent residency after undergoing interviews and medical exams…. The alternative and most common route to citizenship is through a family member or to be sponsored by an employer."

The United States started the lottery in November 1990 to diversify its population with immigrants from under-represented countries, the article said. People from 13 countries have been ineligible from the start to take part in the program, but there’ve been changes there, too.

--- Critics of the program call it unfair and a security risk.

Wikipedia's article on the subject reported that in December 2005, the United States House of Representatives voted 273-148 to add an amendment to border enforcement bill HB 4437 to abolish diversity visas. Opponents of the lottery said it was susceptible to fraud and was a way for terrorists to enter the country. The Senate never passed the bill.

In March 2007, Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) introduced H.R. 1430, which would have eliminated the diversity visa program. The House passed H.R. 2764 to eliminate funding for the program that June, and the Senate did likewise in September, but the final version of this bill with amendments, signed into law on December 26, 2007, did not include the removal of funds for the program.

Goodlatte reintroduced H.R. 1430, as HR 2305, on May 7, 2009, seeking to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act by eliminating the diversity immigrant program completely. That bill apparently died in committee.

This past February, Rep. Goodlatte again introduced legislation seeking to eliminate the program.

"Most family-sponsored immigrants currently face a wait of years to obtain a visa, yet the visa lottery program pushes 50,000 random immigrants with no particular family ties, job skills or education, ahead of (them)," Tuesday's article quoted him as saying. "The very nature of the lottery is such that we have no control over who applies for admission to our country… Those in the world who wish us harm can just as easily engage in this statistical gamble with nothing to lose."

4G benefactor

3G, 4G…. W,X,Y and Gee-G.

A lot of you "get it," but some of us – like LeRoy Jehtro Gibbs, on USA’s “NCIS”, without his McGhee -- are lost and frustrated to say the least.

Some of that might be changing…. Or not.

Wikipedia has a piece on “4G” …. The fourth generation of cellular wireless standards, set up in 2009 by the International Telecommunications Union, the specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for information and communication technologies. ITU coordinates the shared global use of the radio spectrum, promotes international cooperation in assigning satellite orbits, works to improve telecommunication infrastructure in the developing world and establishes worldwide standards. A 4G system, that article says, "is expected to provide a comprehensive and secure all-internet protocol based mobile broadband solution to laptop computer wireless modems, smartphones, and other mobile devices."

Orrrrrrr ….. CNNMoney this morning has an article about a bill introduced by Rep. Anna Eshoo, a Democrat from Palo Alto, Calif., and the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, that "would force carriers to shine more light on exactly what they are providing customers. At the point of sale, wireless providers would have to provide specific information about speed, reliability, coverage zones, pricing, and the technology used for the service. Consumers would also be provided with a side-by-side comparison of the top 10 competing networks' speeds and prices.

"Consumers deserve to know exactly what they're getting for their money when they sign-up for a 4G data plan," Eshoo said. "We need to enhance transparency and ensure consumers are fully informed before they commit to a long-term service contract."

Rep. Eshoo's Next Generation Wireless Disclosure Act
( Press Release )

Ohio statutory rape case revisited

The Ohio Supreme Court case, earlier this month, that held that the state's statutory rape law was unconstitutionally vague as applied to sexual conduct between two children, both of whom were younger than 13, when neither child uses force or impairs the other -- also violating the United States Constitution's Equal Protection Clause because only one child was charged with being delinquent in the case, while others in similar situations were not – appears now to be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Columbus Dispatch, this morning, reported Licking County Prosecutor Ken Oswalt's belief that the court's ruling was overly broad and unfairly eroded prosecutors' ability to make judgment calls about a defendant's culpability in a criminal case.

The ruling suggests that all defendants accused of a particular fact pattern should be charged with the same crime even if their individual culpability might vary, Oswalt said… "It takes away a tool prosecutors can use to charge juveniles with sex offenses when it can't be proved that a defendant used force. The way state law is written, charging a juvenile with a crime is the only way prosecutors can enforce measures such as counseling to address the inappropriate behavior… past U.S. Supreme Court rulings protect a prosecutor's right to make similar judgment calls."

Howard Bashman's blog has further details.

Supreme Court's decision
Court's summary

Update on Ohio's criminal sentencing overhaul

A Columbus Dispatch article this morning observed "Ohio's criminal-sentencing overhaul is growing – now up to 570 pages -- with provisions added by an Ohio Senate panel yesterday requiring prisons to justify why they are keeping inmates 65 or older, provide certificates to help former inmates get jobs, and create an instant diversion program for shoplifters."

An analysis of the bill as it was when it left the House last month is here.

New Kentucky forms

The Kentucky Judiciary's home page is showing lists of new legal forms associated with legislation passed during the 2011 session of the Kentucky General Assembly now available in our Forms Library under 2011 Legislation Forms. [ Here ]

The forms are for use in conjunction with House Bill 463, Kentucky's new penal code reform bill, just passed March 3^rd.; House Bill 308, passed March 16^th., relating to firearms and implementing the National Instant Criminal Background Check System Improvements Act of 2007; and Senate Bill 108, which increases the amount of small claims and civil cases handled in District Court from $4,000 to $5,000

WalMart employment discrimination case

By now pretty much the whole world has heard about the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the WalMart discrimination case yesterday.

CNN.com this morning phrased it "the high-profile case -- perhaps the most closely watched of the high court's term -- is among the most important dealing with corporate vs. worker rights that the justices have ever heard, and could eventually affect nearly every private employer, large and small."

To be sure, as the Wall Street Journal put it, "The decision is sure to reverberate in other employment class actions, with lower courts scrutinizing more carefully the factors that constitute a class for the purpose of bringing mass claims." MSNBC.com said, "Corporations are lauding and workers' rights groups are bemoaning the Supreme Court's much-anticipated decision, which derailed what would have been the biggest gender bias class action suit in U.S. history."

The MSNBC article also quoted Robert Langran, a Supreme Court expert and a Villanova University political science professor, as saying "When you get a company that’s as huge as Wal-Mart and then try to get an all-encompassing class-action suit, it’s not going to go… But it raises the question: What is too big? Where do you draw the line?"

"The case split the court 5-4 along its ideological divide, with Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion concluding the allegations against Wal-Mart were too vague and the evidence too weak to establish the common injury essential to encompass all women employed since 1998 in the roughly 3,400 U.S. Wal-Mart stores,” the Journal said, with the New York Times, however, noting, too, that "the court was unanimous, however, in saying that the plaintiffs' lawyers had improperly sued under a part of the class-action rules that was not primarily concerned with monetary claims."

WalMart Stores v. Dukes, 10-277

Internet sales taxes

To go along with our earlier posting, MSNBC.com is also carrying an article this morning about another one of the plights confronting states these days: Internet retail taxes.

"Internet retailers are required to collect sales tax only when they sell to customers living in a state where they have a physical presence, such as a store or office," MSNBC’s article says. "When consumers order from out-of-state retailers, they are required under state law to pay the tax. But it's difficult to enforce and rarely happens. That means under the current system the seller is absolved of responsibility, buyers save 3 to 9 percent because they rarely volunteer to pay the sales tax, and the state loses revenue."

Internet retailers cite a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving catalog sales, Quill Corp. v. North Dakota," the article continued, "which ruled that states could require only companies that had a physical presence within the state to act as tax collector. To get around the ruling, some states are expanding what it means to be physically present.

"Last year, New York enacted a law that said Internet retailers' practice of paying commissions to marketing agents based within the state constituted a presence. Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Rhode Island and North Carolina quickly followed with similar laws. Bills are pending in Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Pennsylvania."

ICANN domain rule changes

ICANN, the regulatory body that oversees Internet domain names, has voted to revamp the domain naming system for websites, allowing them to end with words like "apple" and "orange" instead of suffixes such as ".com" or ".gov." it is being reported this morning. ( See MSNBC.com, CNNMoney.com and Wall Street Journal articles )

"The dot-com era is over," the Wall Street Journal said this morning, "Welcome to the dot-anything age."

The Journal’s article continued, "… Icann, said the aim for a much more open—and potentially much messier—approach to domain name registration will spur a new rush of innovation. Companies could establish an identifying suffix for brand purposes, and experts say it could help banks or others keen to boost their online security credentials. It may also provide entrepreneurs an opportunity to generate new business by selling second-level domains."

MSNBC.com said experts say corporations and cities should be among the first applicants to register for new generic top-level domain names (gTLDs)

The CNNMoney article, though, says "benefits to the new rules don't come cheaply -- or easily. ICANN charges at $185,000 per domain application, which typically include about 150 pages of policy documents, and technical setup takes another $100,000 or so -- upkeep can cost an additional $100,000 each year…"

ICANN is slated to begin reviewing applications in November or December, and says that new domains should roll out in July 2012.

Social Media, Service of Process & the First Amendment

An EDD update last week made the statement that "As people become more mobile and start to give up traditional worldly tethers such as phone land lines, mail boxes, and address listings in phone books, lawyers are looking for new ways to reach out and touch someone with legal papers… Social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter could soon become other tools for the long arm of the law.

"Giving legal notice acceptable to the courts via social media is complicated by legal issues such as how often a user checks his or her account, lawyers 'friending' parties to a lawsuit, privacy, and where and how do you post legal notice. All these issues need to be carefully sorted out in order to comply with procedural due process…. but courts around the world, such as in Canada, Australia, U.K., and New Zealand are starting to allow virtual service of process; privacy concerns in countries such as Germany and France have prevented adoption of using social media to give notice of court proceedings.. U.S. Courts might not be far behind."
A Federal Courts Law Review article back in Sept. 2009 says, electronic service of process as only available in federal practice under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(f)(3), and is permitted only in the context of "Serving an Individual in a Foreign Country."

The same day, the New York Law Journal carried an article discussing Social Media/First Amendment Face Off, noting at one point that "a growing issue is whether the First Amendment limits the ability of the government to obtain information from social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The argument that is beginning to be raised is that by providing subscriber information to the government, social media sites permit the government to create a "map of association" of all of the contacts, associates, colleagues, and friends of users… This First Amendment check on government investigative activities was most famously explored in the U.S. Supreme Court in NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, in which the Court held that the constitutional right of association -- which is tied to the rights of speech and assembly -- could protect those who join groups from state scrutiny.

"The right to withhold lists of members in a group is not, however, absolute.," the article continued. "The right must be balanced against the government interest. In most cases, a criminal investigation is sufficient justification to compel disclosure, but not always… In 2007, the government sought to obtain customer records from Amazon in In re Grand Jury Subpoena (Amazon), Case No. 07-GJ-04, W.D. Wisc. 2007. The government sought the records to aid in the investigation of a fraudulent book seller, but the court was concerned that the disclosure of the purchase lists, and therefore reading habits of individuals, would violate the First Amendment. Rather than permitting the full disclosure sought by the government, the court fashioned a compromise filtering approach which protected the First Amendment interests of the customers."

U.S. Supreme Court on "Violent Felonies"

So when do "high-speed, often dangerous police pursuits of fleeing motorists, videotaped and packaged into such shows as 'World's Wildest Police Chases,'" as CNN.com this morning referred to them as, "cross over into the realm of 'violent felonies' that could lead to increased jail time?"

This is the fourth time in the past four years the high court has tried to clarify the meaning of "violent felony" under the so-called residual clause of the federal law, the CNN article said, the Court enumerating James v. United States, 550 U. S. 192 (2007); Begay v. United States, 553 U. S. 137 (2008); Chambers v. United States, 555 U. S. 122 (2009).

This current case, Sykes v. U.S.,09-11311, was an appeal from an Indiana man who received an enhanced federal sentence because of prior serious offenses, one of which was for trying to escape in a vehicle. Having attempted to rob two people at gunpoint, Marcus Sykes had pleaded guilty to felony possession of a firearm, a federal offense, but had also had at least three prior felony convictions on his record, including armed robbery. The CNN article further said, "Sykes had received a mandatory minimum 15-year prison term for the gun possession charge, enhanced because of his past criminal record under the federal Armed Career Criminal Act." He appealed, admitting he had fled from police and that it was a felony, but that arguing that that was not "violent."

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the trial court, which had been consistent with the rulings of the Courts of Appeals in the First, Fifth, Sixth, and Tenth Circuits; but was in conflict with a ruling by the Eleventh Circuit, and at least in tension, if not in conflict, with the reasoning of the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and three separate cases from the Ninth Circuit. [Note:The Sixth Circuit case, here in Cincinnati, was U.S. v. LaCasse, decided initially on Nov. 6, 2007, but remanded by the United States Supreme Court, in LaCasse v. United States, 129 S. Ct. 992 (2009) with instructions to reconsider in light of Begay v. United States, 128 S. Ct.1581 (2008), and Chambers v. United States, 129 S. Ct. 687 (2009). Decided on remand on June 4, 2009 ]

The Court's majority here holds that "Under the residual clause in question so too is a crime that ‘otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another,’§924(e)(2)(B)(ii), i.e., a risk ‘comparable to that posed by its closest analog among’ the statute’s enumerated offenses…. When a perpetrator flees police in a car, his determination to elude capture makes a lack of concern for the safety of others an inherent part of the offense."

There were three dissents to the majority's opinion. Justice Antonin Scalia stood in opposition to the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) residual clause in general. Noting the three prior cases mentioned above along with the present case, Scalia wrote "As was perhaps predictable, instead of producing a clarification of the Delphic residual clause, today's opinion produces a fourth ad hoc judgment that will sow further confusion. Insanity, it has been said, is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. Four times is enough. We should admit that ACCA's residual provision is a drafting failure and declare it void for vagueness."

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, also dissented seperately, saying the states properly distinguish different types of efforts to escape police, and that the high court should have relied on those state standards to make its ruling, "rather than trying to parse the federal law's definition of 'violent' felony, which does not specifically include vehicular flight."

Ohio "statutory rape" law in part unconstitutional

The Dayton Daily News this morning reported that Ohio’s Supreme Court ruled that the state's statutory rape law is unconstitutional vague as applied to sexual conduct between two children who are both younger than 13 when neither child uses force or impairs the other, and violates the United States Constitution's Equal Protection Clause because only one child was charged with being delinquent in the case, while others in similar situations were not.

The Court noted, though – while not finding evidence of such here – that " while we hold that R.C. 2907.02(A)(1)(b) is unconstitutional as applied to a child under the age of 13 who engages in sexual conduct with another child under the age of 13, a child under the age of 13 may be found guilty of rape if additional elements are shown: the offender substantially impairs the other person’s judgment or control, R.C. 2907.02(A)(1)(a); the other person’s ability to resist or consent is substantially impaired because of a mental or physical condition or advanced age, R.C. 2907.02(A)(1)(c); or the offender compels the other person to submit by force or threat of force, R.C. 2907.02(A)(2).”

Court’s decision
Case summary

Ohio DUI/Breathalyzer challenges

Circleville, Ohio Municipal Court Judge Gary Dumm last Thursday ruled test results from the Intoxilyzer 8000 will not be admitted in his court until the state can present scientific proof that the machine's technology is sound, the Columbus Dispatch this past weekend revealed. Dumm is the first judge in Ohio to rule that results from the breathalyzer cannot be used to convict drivers of driving under the influence. Critics of the machine’s use hope to route a case to the Ohio Supreme Court for a ruling potentially banning its use statewide. [ Decision ]

Several days earlier, Athens County Municipal Judge William A. Grim had agreed to hear testimony challenging the Intoxilyzer 8000, as well, to determine whether it would be allowed in trial. [ Articles Here & Here ]

Typically, such challenges have been dismissed, citing the 1984 Ohio Supreme Court ruling in State v. Vega where it was held that a defendant’s right to a fair trial was not harmed by not permitting expert witnesses to attack the reliability of such machines in general. Grimm's ruling, though, allowed the testimony, with the judge writing that while Vega is often cited to support the claim that breath-testing machines cannot be challenged in court once they're approved by the Ohio Department of Health, he thinks judges have the authority to determine whether that evidence is allowable and that there were important legal issues left unresolved.

In the years since the Vega decision some things have changed. For one thing, the statute in question was amended in 1983, superseding Vega in some respects. Two years after Vega, in the vehicular homicide case, State v. Scheurell, Ohio’s 10^th. District Court of Appeals said of the revision that, "accordingly, it would appear that we have reverted to the pre-presumption version of the statute, insofar as proving a charge of driving under the influence of alcohol pursuant to R.C. 4511.19(A)(1) is concerned. Under those circumstances, the logic supporting Parton v.. Weilnau, remains compelling. Because the field of chemical testing for alcohol concentration is beyond the common knowledge of laymen, a jury is not qualified to assess this kind of special scientific evidence, if unassisted by a knowledgeable expert."

Judge Dumm's decision in Circleville Municipal Court, last week, relays too, that recent supreme court decisions such as State v. Edwards in 2005, indicate "a defendant at trial may challenge breath tests on grounds other than that the results were illegally obtained because they were obtained in noncompliance with health department rules."

"The Ohio Health Department, which calibrates and certifies the Intoxilyzer 8000, bought 700 of the machines with a $5 million federal grant in 2009, according to the Dispatch. 220 units are already in use in 79 of Ohio's 88 counties, although not some of the larger metropolitan areas such as Cuyahoga, Franklin, and here in Hamilton County.

Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas Rule Amendments

Hamilton County, Ohio�s Court of Common Pleas is proposing amendments to a number of its Local Rules.

In conformity with Ohio Supreme Court Rule of Civil Procedure 83(B) � which states that �local rules of practice shall be adopted only after the court gives appropriate notice and an opportunity for public comment� � the proposed amendments will be posted for 30 days, beginning last Wednesday, June 1^st.

Comments about the proposed rules should be sent in writing before July 1, 2011 to:

Michael L. Walton, court administrator
1000 Main Street
Hamilton County Courthouse, Room 410
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

Text of Proposed Rules

Retroactive Use of Shortened Federal Cocaine Prison Sentences

“Attorney General Eric Holder, in his first public statement on how past crack-cocaine defendants should be handled since the Fair Sentencing Act was signed into law last August, last Wednesday said new reduced penalties for federal crack-cocaine offenses should be applied retroactively, setting up a clash over the potential release of thousands of drug offenders currently in prison.,” The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.

If the new guidelines are applied retroactively, 12,040 offenders sentenced between Oct. 1, 1991 and Sept. 30, 2010 would be eligible to seek reduced sentences, according to U.S. Sentencing Commission research the Journal article said.

A May 20^th.Sentencing Commission memorandum "estimating the impact on offenders currently incarcerated in the federal prison system of portions of the amendment, if the Commission were to make all of the amendment, or those portions, retroactively applicable," chronicled the interval between the passage of theFair Sentencing Act and present. On April 28, 2011, the Commission submitted amendments to the sentencing guidelines and official commentary to Congress, which become effective on November 1, 2011, unless Congress acts objects. The amendments and the reasons for amendment subsequently were published in the Federal Register. See 76 FR 24960 (May 3, 2011). Public comment regarding whether Amendment 2, pertaining to drug offenses, should be included as an amendment that may be applied retroactively to previously sentenced defendants were due on or before June 2, 2011. A "reader-friendly" version of the Commission's Request for Comment on Retroactivity remains online at the Commission’s website.

Wikipedia overview of “Fair Sentencing Act”
Full Text of “Fair Sentencing Act” [Pub. L. No. 111–220, 124 Stat. 2372 (2010) ]

Ohio supporting 2010 Sixth Circuit "Miranda" decision appeal to U.S. Supreme Court

Yesterday's Columbus Dispatch has a story on Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine's joining counterparts from 35 other states in appealing a 2010 Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals "Miranda rights" decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. DeWine's brief, filed in support of Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, said that the 6th Circuit's "framework has no foundation in precedent," "creates artificial and unworkable distinctions in Miranda jurisprudence, and it affords greater rights to prisoners than to other citizens."

DeWine's Press Release
DeWine's brief

Sixth Circuit Decision (Fields v. Howes, 09-1215 )
Michigan's Petition for Certiorari
Brief in opposition

Ohio Supreme Court seeking public comment on pro hac vice rules of practice

The Ohio Supreme Court announced yesterday that it would be accepting public comment on proposed amendments to the Supreme Court Rules of Practice, including clarifications of the process for admission of out-of-state attorneys, until June 29th..

"New rules governing out-of-state attorneys who want to appear temporarily in a proceeding in Ohio became effective Jan. 1, 2011," the Court's announcement said. "The rules centralized the administration of pro hac vice admission through the Supreme Court's Office of Attorney Services and require annual registration. Pro hac vice is a privilege granted by tribunal to out-of-state attorneys not admitted to practice law in Ohio to appear before the tribunal on a limited basis, but there have been some attorneys seeking pro hac vice admission in Supreme Court cases who have not fully complied with the motion requirements contained in the Rules of Practice."

Comments on the proposed rules should be submitted in writing to: Kristina Frost, Clerk of Court, Supreme Court of Ohio, 65 S. Front St., Eighth Floor, Columbus, OH 43215, or via e-mail to kristina.frost@sc.ohio.gov.

Text of Proposed Rule Amendments