Ever since Ohio lawmakers adopted a firearms preemption law several decades ago, anti-gun politicians in cities like Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati have been trying to undo it and to get around its prohibition on local gun control ordinances.
In Cincinnati, that included an effort in 2023 to both challenge the preemption law in court as well as to adopt two ordinances that were meant to do an end run around preemption.
One of those ordinances was a gun storage measure that made it illegal for parents to store their firearms in a way that left them accessible to minors. Those who violated the ordinance could be charged with child endangerment, and that's exactly what happened to Frank West when a friend of his 13-year-old son took one of West's handguns, loaded it, and pulled the trigger.
West's son was shot, and West himself was slapped with a child endangerment charge. The charges were ultimately dropped after West sued the city over the ordinance, and now Cincinnati has been ordered to pay West hundreds of thousands of dollars for his trouble.
Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Melba Marsh found the entire city ordinance void, saying it conflicted with state law, also barring the city from enforcing it. The appeals court later ruled that only part of the child endangerment section of the safe-storage ordinance is invalid.
A three-judge panel found the city’s attempt to regulate gun storage, under the guise of a child endangerment law, “runs into a familiar problem for local governments.” State law, the court said, bans most local gun regulations.
Marsh then ordered the city to pay West’s legal team $300,967 in fees and expenses, court records show. The city filed an appeal challenging the award, arguing that the judge arbitrarily and punitively granted West’s fee request and silently rejected uncontested evidence of unreasonable billing.
The appeals court ultimately sided with West once again.
Mark Painter, who helped represent West in his legal challenge to the ordinance, told the Cincinnati Enquirer it's "mindboggling that the city thought they could get away with it," but I'm not really surprised by the city's doomed defense of the ordinance. It's not like that $300,000 judgment is going to come out of the paychecks of the city council members who passed the gun storage measure in defiance of the preemption law. They faced no personal or professional risk for putting an ordinance on the books that squarely runs afoul of state statute, so why wouldn't they keep appealing adverse rulings from the courts?
Cincinnati could even appeal this most recent decision to the Ohio Supreme Court if local officials want to continue the fight. Columbus, Ohio is also engaged in a legal battle over several ordinances adopted in 2022 and 2023 that were meant to challenge the state's preemption law, so the state's top court is likely going to take up the issue regardless of what Cincinnati decides to do with West's lawsuit. The court has already upheld a previous version of the preemption statute in a 2010 case called Cleveland v. State of Ohio, but has yet to directly rule on an expanded and strengthened version of preemption that was adopted by lawmakers in 2018.
These cities are almost certain to lose when the state Supreme Court eventually weighs in, but the demise of firearms preemption is a top priority for anti-gun politicians and their allies in the gun control lobby. They want cities to be able to adopt their own gun control ordinances that are more restrictive than state law, not only because it allows them to restrict the right to keep and bear arms but because it makes it more difficult to challenge these laws in court. Lawsuits cost money, and challenging multiple ordinances that may have slight differences is far more expensive for Second Amendment organizations than suing over a single statute adopted by a state legislature.
We've already seen Democrats in places like Colorado weaken or repeal firearms preemption entirely, but the vast majority of states still have these protections in place. If the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down bans on so-called assault weapons next term, as it's expected to do, don't be surprised if the gun control lobby puts even more effort into undoing preemption laws around the country. They might not be able to ban commonly-owned firearms, but they'd love for cities to enact local ordinances that make it cost prohibitive or legally dangerous to exercise our Second Amendment rights.
