A few weeks back, I highlighted a major league ethics problem, when Ohio Supreme Court Justice Joe Deters took part in a case in which he had been involved as an attorney at the lower level. His effort to excuse the blatant conflict was worthy of a penalty flag.
And for years now, Ohio has watched aghast that a son (Justice Pat DeWine) has ruled in a number of cases involving his father (the Governor), including voting to approve the illegally gerrymandered maps his dad had signed onto. Another major flag!
Well, let me present one more case that introduces yet another egregious conflict. And perhaps even more than the others, this one puts into sharp relief just what an ethics nightmare the interlocking relationships are at the highest level of Ohio government—and how they impact appearances (which is the legal standard) and outcomes of important Court cases.
Together, amid Ohio’s endless corruption and lawless gerrymandering, these continued ethical challenges at the Supreme Court itself only further undermine any confidence that there is any rule of law left in the state.
WATCH the video above…then read on….trust me, you’ll be glad you did both! Then share this with others.
A Happy Occasion, Until…
The events actually start as a happy occasion, especially for those of us who’ve been awaiting a Bengals’ Super Bowl visit for decades. Well, we finally got one, in February 2022.
Among those who attended that Super Bowl were Governor Mike DeWine and his wife Fran:
Good for them! The DeWines are long-time Bengals fans, and many Governors do this sort of thing.
But…they didn't go alone. They brought with them what one newspaper described as “an unspecified number of family members.” The fact that Governor DeWine brought his family came up a number of times in the build-up to the game; he said that it was one of the things that made the entire Super Bowl so special for him.
On the day of the Super Bowl, at a press conference in LA, he explained that the game was “an opportunity for the DeWine family to have a number of our kids and grandkids really, for the first time, [] travel somewhere [for] the first time for over two years. …As you know, we have a big family, and we’ve put together trips before, but for some reason, this trip got a little more interest than some of the other trips that I’ve put together. We had a few more people raise their hands and say “‘yes, we need to come.’” He added later: “The DeWine family likes sports.”
He even got specific about the contingent’s size after being asked who he would watch the game with: beyond the Governor and his wife, “[w]e’ve got 19 members of our family—kids and grandkids….There’s 21 in our group—if you look at family members, it’s actually 17 out of 20.” (Note: he knew exactly who was in the group).
Given the cost of Super Bowl tickets, the press audibly responded when he said that his group was that big. One woman asked an interesting question: “all going to the game? Really? Because you’re season ticket holders and because you’re the Governor.”
That’s when DeWine explained that he paid for the group’s tickets, laughing: “Well, I wrote the check this morning and I haven’t told Fran what the check was for….She let me sign the check this morning.” LOL! (Note: he knew exactly who he’d paid for).
Just One Question: How Much Did It Cost Taxpayers?
But then things took a weird turn.
With such a large Governor entourage, the day after the game, the Cincinnati Enquirer asked a logical question: how much did Ohio taxpayers pay for this sizable entourage to enjoy the trip and the Super Bowl?
Yes, the Governor had said he paid for the tickets and travel for the entourage. But when a Governor travels, there are other costs involved. And since these are costs the taxpayer is paying for, the public has a right to know what they are. And if they were larger due to the 21-person contingent?
So, the Enquirer asked for records of costs associated with the trip, and specifically the “travel and expenses for troopers and/or staff attending the 2022 Super Bowl in Los Angeles, CA with Gov. DeWine.” This included “overtime pay expenses, airline ticket expenses, meal and hotel expenses, [and] vehicle rental expenses for the trip.”
Again, this really isn’t gotcha journalism….pretty standard stuff. (Cincinnati turned over the cost of the Mayor attending the same day the paper asked).
WELL…the Governor took a different tack.
Because even though he had waxed on about how great it was to bring his large family to the game, suddenly the DeWine administration didn’t think the public should know how much taxpayers paid to make it happen. When asked, his administration—the Ohio’s Department of Public Safety—refused to turn over the information, citing the “security records” exception to the need to turn over public information. Release of even just the cost of the trip, they asserted, “could be used to attack, interfere, or sabotage the Governor or his security detail.”
And due to that refusal, the newspaper did what they usually do—they went to court. In this case, the Ohio Supreme Court.
The Lawsuit
The suit was filed April 2022, and was fought over until January of 2024 .
I’m still scratching my head as to why.
Amid all that Ohio is dealing with, why would the Governor turn a petty dispute over the cost of his family trip into such a big showdown? Just to keep it a secret?
As the Enquirer later speculated; “What we can surmise is that the price tag for DeWine's junket was significant enough that it would have caused him embarrassment if taxpayers found out.” My guess is there are costs from other trips the Governor also wants to keep under wraps.
But I digress.
Once at our state’s highest court, several more odd things happened.
First, as I said above, the Governor’s son—Pat—is an Ohio Supreme Court Justice. As I wrote above, Pat has this terrible habit of taking part in cases involving his dad (including when he’s a named party), when to any Ohioan with common sense this is a blatant conflict of interest. Pat even weighed in on the gerrymandering cases multiple times, ruling in favor of Dad each time.
But in this case, even with this checkered history on recusal, Pat did recuse himself. Why? Most people would say it’s because he’s the son of the Governor whose administration is fighting revealing the costs…but that hasn’t led to recusal in other cases.
No, it looks to be more than that. It turns out Pat was one of the family members on the trip. He was part of the entourage that generated those costs…who his dad said he bought the tickets for…meaning Pat was directly involved in the subject matter of the litigation.
While he didn’t say so in his letter to the court, seemingly that was the conflict so clear that even Pat recused from the case. (The Chief Justice appointed a Republican appellate judge to sit in his place).
The second odd thing that happened in the case is that the Court went along with the administration’s absurd argument that the public dollars incurred for this trip should remain a secret. In a 4-3 decision along party lines, the GOP majority ruled that the request for costs did fall into the security records exception, and that the administration did not even need to release the records redacted of the alleged sensitive/security information.
(By the way, this was a per curiam opinion—meaning we don’t even know who wrote it.)
Justice Mike Donnelly (joined by Justices Stewart and Brunner) dissented, explaining that the specific records requested do not meet the cited exception. As he writes: the records involved were “payroll ledgers, per diem lists, and receipts related to gas-station, hotel, rental-car, and airline expenditures.” None are “directly used for protecting or maintaining the security of a public office against attack, interference, or sabotage.” The requested records were simply used “as evidence of expenditures,” and not used “to protect or maintain security” (as the narrow exception requires).
(An Enquirer editorial said the same: “[T]he Enquirer wasn't requesting specifics about the strategy, procedures or placement of the governor's security detail during the Super Bowl or even an itemized breakdown of expenses. We simply asked for a grand total of what was spent on the taxpayer-funded security detail for the duration of the trip. The notion that releasing that dollar figure could pose a danger to DeWine or sabotage future outings is absurd and an insult to every taxpayer in the state.”)
Justice Donnelly concluded: “The security interests ostensibly at stake in this case are de minimus in general, let alone when weighed against the people’s right to know how much public money was spent while the governor was in California to watch the Super Bowl.”
This also sets a terrible precedent. As the Enquirer’s lawyer later said: “This decision means a governor can go on a pleasure trip and spend a lot of taxpayer dollars - taxpayers paid for the security detail, lodging, transportation and food required for this period he was at the Super Bowl - and taxpayers just don't have any idea how much that cost.”
Finally, Beryl Love, the editor of the Enquirer, said the 4-3 decision “insult[ed] Ohio taxpayers, who have a right to know how much they paid so the governor could attend the Super Bowl with his entourage. The argument that providing this information poses a security threat – especially considering the event occurred two years ago – has no basis.”
He added this upper cut: “The fact this decision was made along party lines speaks for itself. This was a case of a party taking care of its own…”
Remember this last statement: he was more right than he knew.
The Tainted Swing Vote
You see, for those paying attention in Ohio, Pat DeWine is not the only Justice with an entangled relationship with Governor DeWine.
The newest Justice, Deters—the one who already heard a case where he was involved as a lawyer at the appellate level—also has an issue.
From the day it was announced, the appointment of Justice Deters sparked concern that Gov. DeWine was simply appointing an old political crony. After all, Deters leapt to the highest court with no prior judicial experience (the first time in 30 years).
Cleveland.com went as far as to say that the appointment was “incestuous.” Why? As they wrote:
“the apparent ‘you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours’ ties between Deters and Pat DeWine…In 2017, Justice DeWine asked Deters to give the justice’s son a paid six-week internship. Deters did.
Later, in 2019, Deters gave DeWine’s senior staff attorney, Mary Stier, a $100,000 job as an assistant prosecuting attorney handling appellate work, shortly before Justice DeWine’s wife filed for divorce, alleging adultery. Stier and Justice DeWine are now in an acknowledged relationship, the Enquirer reports….
[I[f the above doesn’t seem incestuous enough between the two families, Gov. DeWine also appointed Deters’ brother Dennis Deters to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio in 2019.”
After Deters was sworn into office, he then brought Stier—still Justice DeWine’s significant other—to the Court with him, hiring her as his senior law attorney. As the Enquirer wrote—“Stier is now back at the Supreme Court, working as a senior judicial attorney for Deters. She started Jan. 7, 2023, the day Deters took the oath of office.”
That’s right, not only is the Governor’s son a sitting Justice who’s ruled in his dad’s favor, but that son’s significant other serves as senior attorney in the office of another Justice—where there already was a concern that he was too close to the Governor and his son-Justice.
Catching all of this? Seems pretty entangled, right?
The Entourage
But how does this all get back to the Super Bowl case?
Well, remember that Pat DeWine recused himself from the case, presumably because he was on the trip.
Then remember Governor DeWine’s very specific delineation of who was part of the entourage—whose tickets he said he paid for: beyond him and his wife, he explained, “[w]e’ve got 19 members of our family, kids and grandkids….There’s 21 in our group—if you look at family members, it’s actually 17 out of 20.”
Many people “raise[d] their hands” and wanted to go, he said. And remember, he wrote the check.
Which of course begs the question—was Pat DeWine’s significant other one of those people? Was she part of the group? The group of people the Governor paid for…and the group that benefitted by whatever taxpayers shelled out for that large entourage?
Fair question.
But how do you figure that one out, since apparently the information from the trip is now a state secret.
The first place you’d look is of course online. These days, most families snap and share selfies when on an exciting trip like this. But no luck here. As special as the trip was, no on-line traces exist but a few tweets/posts of cheering words. There don’t seem to be any photos currently online showing the family together on the trip, in LA, or at the game—so either the group took no photos, never posted them, or they took them down later. Hmm.
So, how to find out? Could there be non-social media receipts? An old school paper trail?
Well, the DeWines are famous for sending out a Christmas card far and wide.
And they did so in 2022, paid for by the Ohio Republican Party. They presumably sent it to thousands, adorned by a number of family photos. Of course the leading photo was of the Governor’s reelection, surrounded by family:
It also highlighted a photo of Justice DeWine’s reelection—another big family event that year:
But wouldn’t you know it?
On the next page, in the corner, there’s a group photo of the family standing in front of a big Bengals “B.”
Sort of like “The Big W” in that old movie “It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” this seems like a clue.
But maybe this is some Cincinnati-based pep rally.
No.
If you look closely, behind that big B you can make out the words “SoFi Stadium”—the LA stadium where the Super Bowl was played.
We are getting warmer…
So who was in the group itself?
A big family, of course. About 16 are in the photo. (More than shown in the cropped version below).
For our purposes here, only a few are relevant. And they happen to be right in the center:
And wouldn’t you know it—standing right in front of and to the right of Justice Pat DeWine (to his left), and directly behind the Governor, over his left shoulder—is Joe Deter’s senior attorney.
So yes, she too was part of the DeWine entourage!
Which means that Justice Deters cast a decisive vote to conceal the costs of an entourage that included his own senior attorney. It means that she was directly part of the subject matter of the litigation in the same way that Pat DeWine was—yet Joe Deters did not recuse himself as Pat did.
And when Deters voted to keep those costs secret in an opinion that defies legal logic, he voted to conceal the costs of an entourage 1) his senior attorney was part of, 2) her significant other and fellow Justice was part of, and 3) that the patriarch of the family —who’d arranged for and paid for her to be part of that trip (even signed the check)—had fought to conceal the public costs of for more than a year.
So, in voting to conceal those costs, Deters voted to benefit all three of the others. Now that’s a multi-layered conflict if there ever was one.
Of course, because the Governor knew exactly who was on the trip, he knows all of this too.
And don’t forget, the opinion was a per curiam opinion, meaning we don’t even know who wrote the darn thing, including if it was a group effort and who was part of the research and writing.
Either way, Deters’ provided the crucial fourth vote to keep those costs a secret.
Of course, the two Justices (and judge) who joined Deters to keep it all secret should be asked if they also knew about all this—and if they feel this taints their opinion, and the credibility of the court.
When Enquirer editor Beryl Love said “this was a case of a party taking care of its own,” he was just scratching the surface.
And after reading all this—and seeing such a blatant conflict on a 4-3 case the Governor felt so strongly about—do you feel like you can trust this Court on other big cases coming its way? Where the Governor has equally strong views?
On the scope and shape of Ohio’s new “reproductive freedom” right that DeWine so strongly opposed?
On future rounds of gerrymandered maps?
On the current dispute over Governor DeWine’s firing of a teachers pension fund member, which may soon get appealed to the Court?
If a son can rule in his father’s case, a Justice can rule in a case he was involved with as a lawyer, and now, a Justice can be the swing vote in a decision that benefits his own senior attorney (and when we have no idea if she was involved in the shaping of the decision), what else is left? All bets are off!
Much more to come, but there’s only one real solution: it’s time to get the Court out of this tainted majority’s hands!
BREAKING: A Super (Bowl) Conflict