For the final time, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit claiming more than 300,000 Ohioans are owed $900 million in unemployment checks from the pandemic. The decision not to reconsider the case comes after the court has twice dismissed it as moot.
The lawsuit involves the federal program that sent $300 weekly checks to people unemployed by the pandemic. At the urging of the business community, Gov. Mike DeWine ended the program in Ohio in May 2021, four months before the feds closed it down.
Democratic former attorney general Marc Dann filed the lawsuit. He said these Ohioans are owed the money and need it, but their only hope is for the next governor to choose to go after it.
“The issue's not moot, the money's appropriated. It's sitting there.
They had that evidence in front of them," Dann said. "And all a governor needs to do it rescind Gov. DeWine's decision to terminate the program back in 2021."
Dann said the estimated 300,000 people in his lawsuit would likely use the money right away, which he said would inject almost a billion dollars into Ohio's economy. And he said to him, this case has seemed like kind of a political science experiment.
“Working class people were lined up on one side of this case—legal aid and others that supported us as amicus. And the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and in business organizations were lined up against us," Dann said. "So it really is the haves versus the have-nots here.”
All six Republican justices denied the motion to reconsider the case, and the lone Democrat on the court, Justice Jennifer Brunner, dissented.
