Ohio Supreme Court Reaffirms Text-First Approach in Decision Confirming Marsy’s Law Includes Police Officers

The Ohio Supreme Court late last year held that police officers who were shot at are victims under the state constitution’s Marsy’s Law amendment, which grants certain protections to crime victims and their families. That classification permits the city to redact the officers’ names and other identifying information from public records requested by a newspaper.

Marsy’s Law is a legislative framework adopted across the United States to codify the rights of crime victims. The amendment is named for Marsalee “Marsy” Nicholas, a 21-year-old California college student murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 1983. After her funeral, Marsy’s family unexpectedly encountered the accused, who had been released on bail without their knowledge. That experience prompted her brother to launch a national campaign for protections for crime victims. The framework elevates victims’ rights to constitutional status, requiring timely notification, respectful treatment, and meaningful participation throughout criminal proceedings. In Ohio, voters in 2017 overwhelmingly approved Marsy’s Law, amending the state constitution to create the Ohio Crime Victims’ Bill of Rights.

The dispute in GateHouse Media Ohio Holdings v. City of Columbus Police Department started when GateHouse, publisher of the newspaper The Columbus Dispatch, sought records related to a fatal police shooting. The shooting, as described in the high court opinion, occurred after officers responded to a call to assist in the pursuit of robbery suspects. During the pursuit, a suspect who had remained hidden fired five shots at close range, striking one officer. The wounded officer and other officers on the scene returned fire, fatally shooting the gunman.

When fulfilling the public records request, the city redacted the officers’ names, faces, and voices — identifying information protected under victims’ privacy rights established by the Ohio version of Marsy’s Law. GateHouse brought an original action in the Ohio Supreme Court seeking an order that the police department release unredacted records related to the shooting. In response, the city asserted that the constitutional text of Marsy’s Law categorizes a victim as “a person” against whom a crime is committed or who is “directly and proximately harmed” by a crime.

The media company conceded that the plain language of the amendment seemingly included police officers but urged the court to avoid a purely literal reading of Marsy’s Law. When enacting the amendment, the media company argued, voters likely understood it to apply to private individuals who were victims of crime rather than to armed government actors. Moreover, it said, interpreting Marsy’s Law to shield officers’ identities conflicted with constitutional guarantees of inalienable rights, speech, press, petition, assembly, and open courts that collectively create a right of public access to that information.

In determining that public employees acting in an official capacity may invoke the amendment’s victim privacy protections, a majority of the court concluded that the ordinary meaning of the word “person” was dispositive. Because the majority found no ambiguity, it declined to consider the extratextual evidence cited by GateHouse, such as the understanding of the voters who passed the amendment.

The court next took up GateHouse’s argument that the state constitution separately confers a right of access to public documents that precludes withholding information about officers involved in use-of-force incidents. To the extent the court has recognized a constitutional entitlement to a public record, the majority said, it has done so based on terms of specific clauses, not based on some “amorphous combination” of provisions. The majority continued that, even assuming the Ohio Constitution contained an implied broader right of access to public records, the media company had not established that a general structural principle could defeat a specific voter-enacted command like Marsy’s Law.

By grounding its analysis in ordinary public meaning, the court declined to carve out context-based limitations for law enforcement officers, even where those limitations might align with voter expectations or long-standing norms of public accountability.

Free speech advocates warn that expansive interpretations of victims’ rights provisions may limit transparency in use-of-force cases. If police officers can invoke victim status to suppress public records, journalists may be unable to report on police misconduct. Worse, critics say, the chilling effect could extend to protest and speech more broadly. Ohio’s decision places it among jurisdictions that give the constitutional text broad effect without creating categorical exceptions for law enforcement officers.

The decision contrasts with a 2023 Florida Supreme Court holding that Florida’s Marsy’s Law privacy protections do not extend to the names of police officers involved in fatal shootings. There, the court emphasized that the amendment’s text protects only “information or records that can be used to locate or harass” a crime victim, a formulation narrower than a broader category of identifying information. Information that simply narrows the universe of potential targets, such as an officer’s name, does not, without more, meet the amendment’s threshold for withholding disclosure.

Marsy’s law has been the subject of litigation in other states as well, presenting a variety of questions. For example, the South Dakota Supreme Court held that a victim’s right to privacy was not absolute and had to be balanced against the defendant’s right to due process when he sought information about the victim to aid his defense. And the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected a challenge seeking to invalidate a similar amendment because of alleged deficiencies in the ballot procedures.

Ainslee Johnson-Brown is a constitutional law scholar and advocate specializing in judicial interpretation and the evolving role of state courts in protecting democracy.

Suggested Citation: Ainslee Johnson-Brown, Ohio Supreme Court Reaffirms Text-First Approach in Decision Confirming Marsy’s Law Includes Police Officers, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ(Feb. 18, 2026), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/ohio-supreme-court-reaffirms-text-first-approach-decision-confirming