Ohio’s attorney general has a warning for counties as fair season is in full swing: fairgoers can’t be banned from bringing in guns. And he wants the question about what local entities can and can’t do to come to the state’s highest court later this year.
The Champaign County Fair in western Ohio has long had a no-weapons policy. County prosecuting attorney Kevin Talebi asked Attorney General Dave Yost if the Champaign County Agricultural Society, which operates the annual county fair in Urbana, can ban open and concealed carry of firearms.
In his opinion in response, Yost wrote that based on precedent from previous court rulings and AG opinions, agriculture societies are political subdivisions. So they have to follow the state law that prohibits them from banning guns.
"There's no justification in Ohio law for that. And there's a law specifically banning local cities from having their own laws. The state passed a law saying we want to have one single rule for the entire state, and for all of our citizens to be treated the same," Yost said in an interview.
In his opinion , Yost noted the 2010 Ohio Supreme Court decision upholding the law preempting local ordinances on guns to avoid "a confusing patchwork of licensing requirements, possession restrictions, and criminal penalties as they travel from one jurisdiction to another.”
The justices ruled in that case that the law didn't violate the state's home rule amendment, but there have been many questions about what cities and counties can and can't do under that provision. Yost said he wants to see some of that settled.
"Home rule has been a little bit of a a dog's breakfast of jurisprudence. The courts have created a number of balancing tests and such not that really don't reflect the original meaning of the 1912 amendment on home rule," Yost said. "So we'll be asking the the Supreme Court later this year to, hopefully, go back to the original meaning of home rule and give some clarity, because home rule doesn't mean you get to be a do-it-yourself city-state. This is not ancient Greece."
Some fairs have increased security because of disturbances – a 17-year-old was shot in the Summit County Fair parking lot over the weekend.
