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Ohio workers who claim they’re owed $900m in unemployment COVID funds win again in court

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (Statehouse News Bureau) — An appeals court has ordered Gov. Mike DeWine to take $900 million in federal funds Ohioans needed for unemployment during the COVID pandemic and send that money to them.

A sign in a central Ohio business in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic in 2021
A sign in a central Ohio business in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic in 2021. [Karen Kasler | Statehouse News Bureau]
The Tenth District Court of Appeals agreed with a trial court and sided with 300,000 workers who sued after DeWine ended the $300 weekly federal pandemic unemployment checks in June 2021. Democratic former attorney general Marc Dann filed that suit a month later, saying state law required that money to be accepted till the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) program ended in September. Dann first won a ruling from the Tenth District in 2022.

“This is the second time that’s happened. And so my expectation is that now that the stay is lifted, that the governor will send that letter immediately,” Dann said in an interview. “The governor, for whatever reason, is fighting like hell to keep $900 million from flowing into the hands of the poorest Ohioans at a time when they would probably spend all that money on Ohio businesses.”

Ohio joined 25 other mostly Republican-led states in shutting down the FPUC program, at the urging of major business groups that were having trouble filling open positions.

The lawsuit came back to the appeals court after the Ohio Supreme Court let stand the appeals court’s decision in 2022 and sent the case back to Franklin County Common Pleas Court.

Dann said the order means DeWine must ask for the money, but DeWine does have 45 days to appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court.