Among the sitting justices, Terrence O’Donnell voted 77 percent of the time to restrict access while Judith French voted against access 60 percent of the time, the study found.
The court responded to the analysis by saying it interprets the laws passed by the General Assembly and the court “is not free to use cases to legislate its own views on open government.”
Dennis Hetzel, president of the coalition and director of the Ohio Newspaper Association, said some poorly written laws need to be fixed and he added, “A number of decisions in recent years have made it particularly difficult to gain access to government records in Ohio.”
The coalition, which is a non-profit organization, excluded from its analysis routine prisoner cases and eight rulings where the opinions were mixed.
The coalition noted that a string of recent supreme court decisions have been in favor of open government, including a ruling that private college police force records are subject to disclosure.
Ohio’s open records law describes what documents are available to the public but it contains more than 300 carve outs where records are not to be released.
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