Case Title: In re Judicial Campaign Complaint Against Stormer

Citation: 2013-Ohio-4584

Docket Number: 2012-1874

State: ohio

Court: Ohio Supreme Court

Date: 2013-10-22T00:00:00Z

Document:
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as In 
re Judicial Campaign Complaint Against Stormer, Slip Opinion No. 2013-Ohio-4584.] 
 
 
 
NOTICE 
This slip opinion is subject to formal revision before it is published in 
an advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports.  Readers are requested 
to promptly notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of Ohio, 
65 South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, of any typographical or 
other formal errors in the opinion, in order that corrections may be 
made before the opinion is published. 
 
SLIP OPINION NO. 2013-OHIO-4584 
IN RE JUDICIAL CAMPAIGN COMPLAINT AGAINST STORMER. 
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it 
may be cited as In re Judicial Campaign Complaint Against Stormer,  
Slip Opinion No. 2013-Ohio-4584.] 
Judges—Judicial campaigns—Fundraising—Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E)—Participating 
in or receiving funds from fundraising event that categorizes or identifies 
donors by amount of contributions—Candidate’s participation must be 
knowing—Respondent was not aware of tiered nature of event or identities 
of donors—No violation found. 
(No. 2012-1874—Submitted April 10, 2013—Decided October 22, 2013.) 
APPEAL from the Order of the Judicial Commission of the Supreme Court. 
_______________________ 
Per Curiam. 
{¶ 1} Respondent, Elinore Marsh Stormer of Akron, Ohio, Attorney 
Registration No. 0014168, was admitted to the practice of law in Ohio in 1982.  
She was a candidate for Summit County probate judge in 2012.  In October 2012, 
her opponent, Summit County Court of Common Pleas Judge Alison McCarty, 
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filed a grievance with the Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline 
alleging that Stormer had committed multiple violations of the Code of Judicial 
Conduct.  A probable-cause panel of the board reviewed the grievance pursuant to 
Gov.Jud.R. II(5)(B).  The secretary of the board then filed a formal complaint 
alleging that during the judicial campaign, Stormer participated in judicial 
fundraising events sponsored by the Summit County Democratic Party on July 31 
and September 25, 2012, that contributors at those events were categorized by 
amount contributed, and that Stormer’s campaign committee received funds from 
those events in violation of former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E), 120 Ohio St.3d XCVIII, 
86, adopted  Mar. 1, 2009 (prohibiting a judicial candidate from participating in or 
receiving campaign contributions from a judicial fundraising event that 
categorizes or identifies participants by the amount of the contribution made to 
the event).1  
{¶ 2} A panel of the board conducted a hearing and found by clear and 
convincing evidence that Stormer had violated former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E) by 
attending, participating in, and receiving money from just one of the two 
challenged fund-raising events.  The panel, however, recommended that no 
disciplinary sanction or fine be imposed, but that Stormer be ordered to pay the 
costs of the proceedings and reimburse $2,000 of the complainant’s attorney fees. 
{¶ 3} A commission of five judges appointed by this court pursuant to 
Gov.Jud.R. II(5)(D)(1) and R.C. 2701.11 unanimously held, over the objections 
of Stormer and McCarty, that the record supported the hearing panel’s finding 
that Stormer violated former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E) and that the panel did not abuse 
its discretion in making its recommendation.  In re Judicial Campaign Complaint 
Against Stormer, 134 Ohio St.3d 1404, 2013-Ohio-34, 980 N.E.2d 1045. 
                                                 
1On December 7, 2012, this court adopted amendments to Jud.Cond.R. 4.4 that abrogated the 
version of Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E) under which Stormer is charged.  Jud.Cond.R. 4.4, 133 Ohio St.3d 
LXXXIII, LXXXVII, effective Jan. 1, 2013.   
January Term, 2013 
 
3
{¶ 4} Expressing the view that the sanction should be commensurate 
with the seriousness of the violation and should deter similar misconduct in the 
future, however, the commission ordered Stormer to pay a $1,000 fine.  The 
commission also ordered her to pay the costs of the proceeding and $6,000 of 
McCarty’s attorney fees. 
{¶ 5} Stormer appeals and challenges the commission’s findings of 
misconduct, the application of former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E) to the facts of this case, 
and the order to pay a fine, costs, and attorney fees.  For the reasons that follow, 
we find that no violation of former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E) has occurred, and we 
reverse the commission’s January 10, 2013 order. 
Participation in and Receipt of Campaign Contributions from a Judicial 
Fundraising Event that Categorized or Identified Participants by the 
Amount of Their Contribution 
{¶ 6} The commission determined that the record supports the hearing 
panel’s finding that Stormer violated former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E) by participating 
in and receiving contributions from a September 25, 2012 judicial fundraising 
event conducted by the Summit County Democratic Party that categorized or 
identified participants by the amount of their contribution to the event. 
{¶ 7} On September 25, 2012, the Summit County Democratic Party 
held a fundraiser billed as a “Judicial Salute,” featuring Stormer and six other 
candidates for judicial office.  The party established four levels of sponsorship for 
the event: 
 
 
 
Table of Ten Sponsor: 
 $1,500 
 
 
 
Gold Sponsor:  
$500 
 
 
 
Silver Sponsor: 
$250 
 
 
 
Individual Sponsor: 
$150 
{¶ 8} The party requested that checks for this event be made payable to 
the Summit County Democratic Party, rather than the party’s judicial fund.  The 
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panel found that the only recognition awarded to sponsors who gave at the 
designated levels was a flyer naming them, with the heading “Thank You to Our 
Sponsors.” The party’s executive director, Megan Moreland, testified that she 
placed a single copy of the flyer on approximately 20 tables at the event.  Stormer 
testified that she arrived late for the event, that she did not see the flyer 
identifying the sponsors, and that her participation consisted of standing in a 
receiving line. 
{¶ 9} Although the event was billed as a general fundraiser for the party, 
the panel found that the entire $37,800 raised at the event was deposited into the 
party’s judicial fund.  The panel also found that on October 7, 2012, the party 
gave Stormer’s campaign $23,000 from that fund.  The panel believed that former 
Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E) was intended to prevent the perception that donors who 
received special recognition for giving larger sums of money at a single campaign 
event might get special treatment from the candidate once elected.  Because 
donors at the September 25, 2012 event were recognized based on the amount of 
their donation, the panel concluded that Stormer’s participation in and her receipt 
of money from that event violated former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E). 
{¶ 10} The panel expressly rejected Stormer’s constitutional challenges to 
the rule, as well as her argument that only knowing violations of the rule could be 
sanctioned.  The panel also overruled her assertion that McCarty’s claim was 
barred by the doctrine of laches.  It did, however, find her violation of the rule to 
be “more technical than substantive” and observed that the participation of six 
other judicial candidates indicated that Stormer was not alone in her 
misunderstanding of the rule. 
{¶ 11} The commission of judges conducted a conference by telephone on 
December 19, 2012. After considering the record, the objections, and the answer 
brief submitted by Stormer and McCarty, the commission unanimously held that 
January Term, 2013 
 
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the record supported the panel’s finding that Stormer violated former Jud.Cond.R. 
4.4(E) with regard to the September 2012 fundraising event. 
{¶ 12} Focusing on the plain language of former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E), the 
commission found that the evidence supported the panel’s conclusion that the 
September 25, 2012 event clearly identified donors and their corresponding 
sponsorship levels and that the public recognition of those donors at the event was 
an expression of gratitude—the very thing that the commission concluded the rule 
sought to prevent. Like the panel, the commission rejected Stormer’s argument 
that the rule should not apply to her unknowing conduct and found that “[t]he rule 
carries no scienter requirement and consequently serves to prohibit the activity 
regardless of the knowledge or even the level of involvement by the candidate or 
her campaign committee.” 
Stormer’s Challenges to the Enforcement of Former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E) 
{¶ 13} Stormer argues that former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E) is both 
unconstitutionally vague and overbroad and that its imposition of strict liability 
for the acts of others of which she has no knowledge and over which she has no 
control unduly impinges on her freedom of speech and association.  In support of 
these arguments, she notes that there is no record of any prior grievance or case 
alleging a violation of the rule since the rule was first adopted in 19952 and 
suggests that the rule is either commonly misunderstood or inequitably enforced 
because all of the Democratic judges and judicial candidates in Summit County 
attended the challenged event, yet she is the only judge charged with violating the 
rule.  Moreover, she argues that this court’s repeal of Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E) during 
                                                 
2 See former Jud.Cond.R. 7(C)(3), 72 Ohio St.3d XCI, XCVI, effective July 1, 1995 (“A judicial 
candidate shall not participate in or receive campaign contributions from a  judicial fund raising 
event that categorizes or identifies participants by the amount of the contribution made to the 
event”).  A Report of the Citizens’ Committee on Judicial Elections recommended that the rule 
provide, “Judicial candidate[s] shall not participate in or receive campaign contributions from a 
fund raising event that categorizes or identifies participants by the amount of the contribution 
made to the event.”  72 Ohio St.3d 1430, 1492.  The court, however, amended the proposed rule 
by inserting the word “judicial” before the phrase “fund raising event.”  72 Ohio St.3d 1450. 
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the pendency of this action suggests that the rule is constitutionally infirm or has 
failed to serve its intended purpose such that it is inequitable and unjust to enforce 
the now defunct rule against her. 
{¶ 14} Former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E) prohibited a judicial candidate from 
participating in or receiving campaign contributions “from a judicial fundraising 
event that categorizes or identifies participants by the amount of the contribution 
made to the event,” but it did not define the term “judicial fundraising event.”  
Given the context of the rule, however, as part of the canon that deals with 
judicial campaign activity, and more specifically, as part of the very rule that 
governs campaign solicitations and contributions, it is evident that the rule sought 
to prohibit judicial candidates from participating in or receiving campaign 
contributions from judicial fundraisers when the participants are categorized or 
identified by the amount of their contributions.  The plain language of the rule 
indicated an intent that it apply to all events that raise funds for judicial 
campaigns—not just those events planned or hosted by the candidate’s own 
campaign committee. 
{¶ 15} In this case, however, the invitations to the party’s September 25, 
2012 event specified that checks were to be made payable to the Summit County 
Democratic Party—not the party’s judicial fund.  Moreland testified that having 
the checks issued in this manner afforded the party more flexibility to allocate the 
funds according to its needs.  Thus, by all outward appearances, the September 
25, 2012 event was a Democratic Party fundraiser, except that the party elected to 
allocate 100 percent of the proceeds to its judicial fund without any notice to 
Stormer. 
{¶ 16} Former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E) did not specify that any mens rea was 
required to violate the rule.  Therefore, the commission found that a judicial 
candidate is strictly liable for a violation of the rule regardless of the candidate’s 
January Term, 2013 
 
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knowledge or level of involvement in the event and that Stormer’s professed lack 
of knowledge was immaterial.   
  
{¶ 17} The commission also implicitly overruled Stormer’s vagueness and 
overbreadth challenges to the rule. To the extent that former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E) 
regulated a judicial candidate’s participation in fundraising events, however, it 
necessarily implicates the freedoms of speech and association that are protected 
by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, made applicable to the 
states through the Fourteenth Amendment.  See NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. 
Patterson, 357 U.S. 449, 460, 78 S. Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488 (1958) (“Effective 
advocacy of both public and private points of view, particularly controversial 
ones, is undeniably enhanced by group association, as this Court has more than 
once recognized by remarking upon the close nexus between the freedoms of 
speech and assembly”). 
{¶ 18} In Grayned v. Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 109, 92 S.Ct. 2294, 33 
L.Ed.2d 222 (1972), the Supreme Court of the United States stated, “It is a basic 
principle of due process that an enactment is void for vagueness if its prohibitions 
are not clearly defined.”  Specifically, an enactment is void for vagueness if it (1) 
fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to know 
what is prohibited so that he may act accordingly, (2) invites arbitrary and 
discriminatory enforcement by failing to provide explicit standards for those who 
apply it, and (3) operates to inhibit the exercise of fundamental First Amendment 
freedoms.  Id.  Closely related to the third consideration of the vagueness analysis 
is the doctrine of overbreadth, which recognizes that “the very existence of some 
broadly written statutes may have such a deterrent effect on free expression that 
they should be subject to challenge even by a party whose own conduct may be 
unprotected.”  Members of Los Angeles City Council v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 
466 U.S. 789, 798, 104 S.Ct. 2118, 80 L.Ed.2d 772 (1984), citing Thornhill v. 
Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 60 S.Ct. 736, 84 L.Ed. 1093 (1940).  However, 
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invalidation for overbreadth is strong medicine that is not to be applied casually. 
United States v. Williams, 553 U.S. 285, 293, 128 S.Ct. 1830, 170 L.Ed.2d 650 
(2008). 
{¶ 19} Here, the failure of former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E) to specify a mens 
rea left judicial candidates like Stormer vulnerable to liability for participating in 
or receiving funding from events that were billed as general party fundraisers but, 
unbeknownst to the candidate, were actually “tiered” giving events.  In the 
absence of a specific mens rea requirement, a candidate could be assured that his 
or her conduct would conform to the rule only by (1) avoiding participation in any 
tiered giving events if the funds raised could be utilized for judicial campaigns 
and (2) avoiding the acceptance of funds from any organization that categorizes or 
identifies participants by the amount of their contributions.  And to the extent that 
this interpretation of the rule would limit the participation of judicial candidates at 
party-sponsored fundraising events where there is a tiered giving structure, it 
would adversely affect the candidates’ exercise of fundamental First Amendment 
freedoms. 
{¶ 20} It has long been recognized that a statute or other rule of law “ 
‘must be construed, if fairly possible, so as to avoid not only the conclusion that it 
unconstitutional, but also grave doubts upon that score.’ ”  George Moore Ice 
Cream Co. v. Rose, 289 U.S. 373, 379, 53 S.Ct. 620, 77 L.Ed. 1265 (1933), 
quoting United States v. Jin Fuey Moy, 241 U.S. 394, 401, 36 S.Ct. 658, 60 L.Ed 
1061 (1916).  Because we find absolute liability for the actions of third persons 
over which a judicial candidate has no control (and which may occur well after 
the candidate has acted) to be inconsistent with these precepts, we narrowly 
construe former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E) as requiring a knowing violation of the rule 
by participating in or receiving campaign contributions from a judicial fundraising 
event that categorizes or identifies participants by the amount of the contribution 
made at the event. 
January Term, 2013 
 
9
{¶ 21} In this case, Stormer testified that she attended the September 25, 
2012 event hosted by the party but that she believed that it was a fundraiser for 
the party, not the party’s judicial fund.  She was unaware that the event had been 
billed as a “Judicial Salute,” did not recall having seen the party flyers suggesting 
tiered levels of giving, and did not see the “Thank You to Our Sponsors” handout 
with the sponsors’ names.  She testified that she did not learn the identities of the 
party’s donors or the amounts of their donations—which were fully and publicly 
disclosed in the party’s October 24, 2012 Ohio Campaign Finance Report—until 
the panel hearing on this matter on October 30. 
{¶ 22} Although Stormer’s own campaign-finance report reflects receipt 
of donations from the party’s executive committee, the record reflects that she had 
no knowledge of how the party had allocated the funds from the September 2012 
tiered giving event.  Therefore, we conclude that Stormer did not knowingly 
violate former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E). 
{¶ 23} Even if we were to find that Stormer’s conduct constituted a 
technical violation of the rule, however, we would not be required to impose 
discipline.  Paragraph 6 of the Scope of the Ohio Code of Judicial Conduct 
provides: 
 
Although the black letter of the rules is binding and 
enforceable, it is not contemplated that every transgression will 
result in the imposition of discipline.  Whether discipline should be 
imposed should be determined through a reasonable and reasoned 
application of the rules and should depend upon factors such as the 
seriousness of the transgression, the facts and circumstances that 
existed at the time of the transgression, the extent of any pattern of 
improper activity, whether there have been previous violations and, 
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the effect of the improper activity upon the judicial system or 
others. 
 
{¶ 24} In addition to the constitutional concerns addressed above, it 
appears that Stormer is the only judicial candidate to be formally charged with a 
violation of former Jud.Cond.R. 4.4(E) in the 17 years that it was in effect.  The 
commission’s finding that she violated the rule did not come until January 10, 
2013—ten days after the rule was abrogated.  In light of these unusual 
circumstances, the absence of any need to deter future conduct of this nature, 
whether committed by Stormer or any other judicial candidate, and Stormer’s 
exemplary record during her more than 30 years of legal practice, more than 20 of 
which have been spent on the bench, we conclude that no sanction is warranted. 
{¶ 25} Accordingly, we reverse the order of the commission and order the 
Office of Attorney Services to remove the January 10, 2013 Judicial Campaign 
Conduct Violation from Stormer’s record. 
Order reversed. 
O’CONNOR, C.J., and PFEIFER, O’DONNELL, LANZINGER, KENNEDY, 
FRENCH, and O’NEILL, JJ., concur. 
_________________________ 
Alison McCarty, pro se. 
McTigue & McGinnis, L.L.C., Donald J. McTigue, Mark A. McGinnis, 
and J. Corey Colombo, for respondent. 
_________________________