By Halena Sepulveda at Kent State University
Broadcast version by Mary Schuermann reporting for the Kent State-Ohio News Connection Collaboration.

A bill currently making its way through the Ohio legislature could increase the penalties for people arrested while protesting in the state.

Ohio House Bill 109 would create three new felony charges of "riot assault," "riot vandalism" and "bias motivated intimidation." These charges are fifth-degree felonies, and can be raised up to third-degree felonies if the alleged assault results in the injury of a law enforcement officer.

The first two charges would intensify the penalties for offenses like rioting and disorderly conduct. "Bias motivated intimidation," a new charge, would make it a felony to cause harm to a person or their property because of their status as a first responder.

The legislation is one of several bills written as a response to protests that occurred during the summer of 2020. It has seen significant partisan support from Ohio's Republican State Representatives after it was introduced by primary sponsors Rep. Sarah Carruthers (R-Hamilton) and Rep. Cindy Abrams (R-Harrison) in February.

"As a former Cincinnati Police officer, this bill hits close to home," Representative Abrams said via email. In 2001, she served as a member of a 15-officer response team that responded to civil unrest.

"The violent actions of a few bad actors place everyone at risk - peaceful protesters, community members, and law enforcement," Abrams wrote. "HB 109 ensures that the individuals seeking to harm others during these mass gatherings are held accountable."

Opponents of the bill argue that it threatens the First Amendment rights of Ohioans. Gary Daniels, chief lobbyist for the ACLU of Ohio, says organizations that plan or promote protests and demonstrations could be at risk.

If violence breaks out at any level during a protest, the organization that promoted or planned the event could be in violation of HB 109 and Ohio's corrupt activity laws, which involve the engagement or attempted engagement in conduct defined as "racketeering activity"

"All the years that I've been doing this work, I haven't seen a bill as bad as this with regard to free speech rights," Daniels said.

Ohio is currently in the second year of its two-year legislative session, which will end in December 2022. House Bill 109 passed in Ohio's House of Representatives and is waiting on a decision from the Senate. If the Senate approves the bill, it will go to Gov. Mike DeWine for a signature or veto.

The legislature will adjourn for recess during the beginning of June and will reconvene in November.

"I am working with my colleagues in the Ohio Senate and across the aisle to pass this bill and have high hopes HB 109 will be signed into law by the end of the year," Abrams said via email.

Ohio defines a riot as a group of four or more people who gather and violate disorderly conduct codes, intending to commit a misdemeanor or prevent a public official from doing their job.

Organizations like the ACLU of Ohio are concerned of what the passing of HB 109 will mean for future protests and the right for Ohioans to assemble for causes they care about.

"I think the result for an awful lot of people is they are just going to simply stop speaking, stop participating, stop planning, stop demonstrating," Daniels said.

This collaboration is produced in association with Media in the Public Interest and funded in part by the George Gund Foundation.




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Groups fighting for Palestinian rights are praising a new fact sheet on religious discrimination from the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, because of what it left out.

The document does not include a definition of antisemitism written by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

Former President Donald Trump issued an executive order in 2019 requiring federal agencies to consider the IHRA definition when investigating Title VI complaints of discrimination.

Lina Assi, advocacy manager for Palestine Legal, said the definition and the accompanying examples conflate criticism of the Israeli state with antisemitism.

"We mostly have seen it with shutting down events and punishing students and professors that speak about life as a Palestinian," Assi recounted. "And we believe that definition not only violates our constitutional right to free speech, but also perpetuates anti-Palestinian racism and discrimination."

In a statement, IHRA said the working definition is non-legally binding, and the organization does not track implementation of it at the state or local level. Last year, pro-Israel attorneys filed a federal discrimination complaint against University of California-Berkeley after student groups passed a bylaw pledging not to host Zionist speakers.

Assi noted last March, the student government at Arizona State University questioned an event with a pro-Palestinian poet and journalist before ultimately allowing him to speak.

"A student government committee first attempted to condition the approval of the event to say that the speaker needs to refrain from criticizing Israel," Assi pointed out. "Student government officials stated falsely that the university and the federal government had adopted IHRA and that they were required by law to adhere to the definition."

The pro-Israel Brandeis Center has called for the IHRA definition to be codified into a formal rule.

Meanwhile, 17 civil rights groups wrote to the federal government, asking for the IHRA definition to be excluded from the fact sheet.

Lawmakers in the Commonwealth are considering legislation to ensure police use of facial-recognition technology also protects people's privacy and civil rights.

Massachusetts was one of the first states to implement restrictions on the technology as part of a sweeping police reform law in 2020. A special legislative commission, which included police and civil liberties activists, then developed even greater restrictions on use of facial-recognition software.

Kade Crockford, Technology for Liberty program director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, called the latest bill a 'win,' both for police and the public.

"The police can use the technology to help them solve very serious crimes," Crockford pointed out. "And the public can benefit not only from that, but also from regulations that protect our basic privacy and civil rights at the same time."

The current bill would require police to obtain a warrant to perform a facial recognition search and ensure the results of the search alone cannot be used to arrest someone or obtain a search warrant.

Facial-recognition technology can be faulty and has resulted in the false arrests and incarceration of people across the country.

A federal study found the majority of algorithms are less accurate with Black, Asian and Native American faces, while other research finds some algorithms misidentify Black women nearly 35% of the time.

Crockford argued by passing the legislation, lawmakers can prevent those types of mistakes from happening here.

"Because if they do, it would make Massachusetts a leader, not only here in the United States, but really, worldwide," Crockford asserted.

The legislation passed the House last session, but failed to get a vote in the Senate. Crockford hopes former Attorney General, now Gov. Maura Healy's previous support of the bill will improve its chances this year.

By nearly every measure, voter fraud in U.S. elections is rare, but that isn't stopping the Texas Legislature from considering dozens of bills this session, some of which a voter rights group calls "extreme."

The Texas Republican Party has made election security one of its legislative priorities this year, with bills introduced to further restrict access to the ballot box. In contrast, Democrats are pushing legislation to expand voting access.

Texas ACLU senior attorney Matt Simpson said he believes some of the bills, including one to change the penalty for illegal voting from a misdemeanor to a felony, will create fear and intimidate people at the polls.

"If you take a step back, and you try to identify where the election fraud is that's being targeted - all of these proposals, more or less, amount to solutions in search of a problem," he said, "and Texas hasn't really had an election-fraud problem."

Following the defeat of Donald Trump by President Joe Biden in 2020, Texas' GOP-dominated Legislature approved multiple new voting restrictions including rules for voting by mail, a prohibition on drive-through and 24-hour voting, and a reduction in local initiatives meant to make it easier to vote.

One Republican proposal would create a new law-enforcement unit to prosecute election crimes, modeled after a law authorized by Florida's Republican governor. The Texas unit, to be led by state "election marshals," would prosecute election and voting crimes.

Simpson, who has monitored actions at the Capitol since 2009, isn't convinced it's needed.

"There's, like, a very small segment of Republican voters that that's a priority for," he said, "and yet we're seeing just this large number of proposals - a lot of conversation about it - and I just wonder where the mismatch is."

A 359-page audit of the 2020 election was released by the Texas secretary of state's office. It reviewed the two largest Democratic counties and two largest Republican ones and found some "irregularities," but concluded they were largely related to holding an election during a pandemic.