A Franklin County judge last week blocked a state law that would have eliminated Ohio’s special legal authority to sue neighbors who pollute steel plants or others by spewing smoke, ash or other fumes into the sky.
This marks the second time in just a few years that environmental interests have successfully suppressed, at least temporarily, an effort to repeal an air nuisance rule that has been in place in Ohio for more than 50 years.
Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Julie Lynch ruled last week that lawmakers directed state officials to repeal an air nuisance rule that Incorporated into state budget as 11th hour amendmentviolating a provision in the state constitution that requires legislation to cover only one subject.
“The air pollution amendment has nothing to do with appropriations or state operations. Therefore, it violates the single subject rule of the Constitution,” she said.
Air nuisance rules are fairly simple. It states that the emission or escape of smoke, ash, dust, dirt, acid, fumes, gases, vapors or other substances hazardous to the health, safety or welfare of the public or property is an unlawful nuisance. Since 1974, the rule has been part of Ohio’s comprehensive plan to comply with the federal Clean Air Act, the bedrock law protecting America’s ambient air.
Among the plaintiffs is Donna Ballinger, a Cincinnati-area woman who used air nuisance rules to go after a neighboring 2,800-acre steel plant currently owned by Cleveland Cliffs in the Butler and Warren County areas. The law has been used by the state and private citizens in the past, with one resident winning a $1.3 million prize settlement from a nuclear waste disposal company in the Dayton area.
Eliminating the rule would prevent plaintiffs from filing lawsuits in federal court, some of whom argue the new rule narrows, if not closes, the door to state litigation.
Lynch’s ruling also struck down a provision that prohibited the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency from considering data from community air monitoring devices to support fines or penalties. The devices are privately owned sensors that some people deploy when they feel officials don’t believe their complaints.
A spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office said they are reviewing the ruling and determining next steps. He did not answer whether the state plans to appeal the decision.
Environmental groups including the Ohio Environmental Council and the Case Western Reserve University Environmental Law Clinic, which participated in the lawsuit, hailed the ruling as a victory.
“Repealing the air nuisance rule has never been popular or justified, and Ohio’s own record shows that it is an important tool used by the public and state agencies to hold large polluters accountable,” said Neil Wagoner, Sierra Club Midwest Beyond Coal campaign manager.
“The court’s ruling is clear that Ohio should move quickly to end current repeal efforts and should not take any further action to undermine the rule again.”
The steel industry, which Republicans have targeted in the past
In 2019, SunCoke hired a law firm to lobby the EPA to remove air nuisance rules from Ohio’s Clean Air Act program. The company produces coke used in the steel-making process and has been accused of violating air emissions regulations multiple times in Ohio.
Most such administrative law changes require fairly robust and transparent procedures. But as the company argued, and the EPA under President Donald Trump agreed, the decision to enact the law was called a technical “error” in the first place, allowing it to make changes quickly.
Ballinger and a series of different environmental advocacy groups sued to block the EPA’s implementation. Mixed elongation legal pressure A change in presidential administration ultimately led to the rule’s reinstatement in February 2025.
Around that time, lawmakers weighed in on the issue as they crafted the state budget, with support from SunCoke, Cleveland Cliffs and the Chamber of Commerce.
Senators asked the Ohio EPA to remove it from Ohio’s Clean Air Act program, effectively weakening the rule. They did this through the latest amendment passed before the legislation was passed. Senate Finance Chairman Jerry Sirino, a Cortland Republican, declined to say which senator proposed it.
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This story was originally published on ohio signal and distributed in partnership with The Associated Press.
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