Mays v. LaRose

People who are arrested and held in jails have the constitutional right to vote in elections. They are innocent until proven guilty and cannot be disfranchised.

But, in Ohio, if a person is jailed in the days leading up to Election Day after the deadline to request an absentee ballot there is literally no way for them to cast a ballot.

Even while it disfranchises jailed voters in this way, Ohio makes special accommodations to deliver ballots to people who are to hospitals on Election Day. We filed this class action lawsuit to demand that jailed voters receive the same accommodations.

We won a significant victory in federal district court. Unfortunately, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that victory, allowing the state to refuse to provide equal treatment to jailed voters even while it acknowledged that our clients literally had no way to cast a ballot from jail.