Sixth Circuit OKs Ohio ban on foreign campaign contributions

CINCINNATI (CN) — A law that bans all foreign nationals, including lawful permanent residents, from making political campaign contributions of any kind does not violate the First Amendment, the Sixth Circuit ruled Tuesday in an opinion that dissolved an injunction granted by a federal judge.

Foreign influence over U.S. elections has become a hot-button issue over the past decade, and in 2024, the Republican-led Ohio Legislature passed a law to ban monetary campaign contributions by foreign nationals, including lawful permanent residents and immigrants with green cards.

According to data from 2023, the Buckeye State is home to over 600,000 such individuals, a number that has risen sharply in recent years.

Several immigrants and Ohio Progressive Asian Leadership — Building AAPI Feminist Leadership, or OPAWL, challenged the law in federal court and were granted an injunction in September 2024.

U.S. District Judge Michael Watson, a George W. Bush appointee, found they were likely to prevail on First Amendment claims against the state because the harm inflicted on the foreign nationals outweighed Ohio’s interest in preventing undue influence.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost appealed to the Sixth Circuit and was granted a stay of the injunction in October 2024 after a panel conducted a preliminary review and found the state was likely to prevail on First Amendment claims.

Arguments on the merits of the case were held in July 2025, and while they involved a separate panel of judges, the outcome was the same: a victory for Yost and the state of Ohio.

In a brief, four-page opinion, the two Republican judges on the panel, U.S. Circuit Judges Raymond Kethledge and Eric Murphy, appointees of George W. Bush and Donald Trump, respectively, sided with the state based on the same criteria as the panel that issued the initial stay of Watson’s injunction.

Kethledge and Murphy did write a concurring opinion, however, to express concerns about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in similar cases and its inconsistent application of “strict scrutiny” to First Amendment issues.

“Despite the test’s uniform requirements in theory, the court has seemed to apply both a rigorous version and a watered-down version of strict scrutiny in practice,” they said and cited the 1992 case Burson v. Freeman .

“The court’s cases diverge on the evidence that the government must produce to satisfy strict scrutiny. When the court upholds a law, it typically allows the government to rely on ‘intuition’ that the law advances a compelling interest. The court thus relied on ‘common sense’ (not record evidence) to hold that a state may ban political displays in and around polling places to prevent voter intimidation and ensure reliable elections. When the court finds a law unconstitutional, by contrast, it sometimes criticizes the government for relying on this sort of intuition.”

As a result, Kethledge and Murphy called the current case “difficult,” considering Yost has offered little evidence to support the necessity of the law or how it furthers Ohio’s interests, although they did point out such evidence can be hard to come by because “the ‘concept’ of foreign influence in an election ‘does not easily reduce to precise definition’ or ’lend itself to proof by documentary record.’”

U.S. Circuit Judge Andre Mathis, a Joe Biden appointee, wrote a dissenting opinion and said the law “tramples on the First Amendment free speech rights of lawful permanent residents.”

Mathis continued with the strict scrutiny analysis taken up by his fellow judges and emphasized Ohio’s law is not narrowly tailored because it includes no exceptions for lawful permanent residents.

He criticized Yost for his failure to justify the law’s breadth with any evidence of nefarious foreign influence.

“Ohio needed some evidence to support its restrictions on the First Amendment rights of lawful permanent residents. How did Ohio respond to its evidentiary burden? It offered no legislative findings. As far as record evidence, Ohio merely points to media reports and speculates that foreign money may have influenced the outcome of Ohio’s special and general elections in 2023,” Mathis said.

Neither party immediately responded to requests for comment.

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