The Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled against the City of Toledo in a lawsuit that will uphold financial penalties levied by the State against cities that operate traffic cameras. The ruling overturns lower court rulings from the Lucas County Common Pleas court and the Sixth District Court of Appeals.
The state Supreme Court previously had ruled in favor of cities that operated the controversial traffic cameras, stating that they had the home-rule right to enact those laws. In upholding that, the court struck down parts of a state law that restricted the use of the cameras.
In this new ruling, however, the court has held that the lower courts did not have the authority to strike down the financial penalties enacted by the state legislature, because no action had been filed to challenge their constitutionality, and that no court had found them unconstitutional. The budget proposal that enacted the penalties was separate from the previous traffic camera law, and the lower courts had used the permanent injunction order on the last law as the basis for striking down the penalties.