News
A court says two women who challenged their removal from Nelsonville City Council no longer have a case
By: David Forster
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — Two Nelsonville women who say they were wrongfully removed from the City Council filed a legal action two years ago to reclaim those seats. Last week, they finally got their answer: The 4th District Court of Appeals said there is nothing it can do because those seats no longer exist.
In other words, the case is moot.
She resigned three months later over a council dispute but then rescinded her resignation the following morning.
She continued to serve as council president for several meetings in February and March and appointed Powell to a vacant council seat.
Meanwhile, a group of council members who said Nguyen could not undo her resignation chose someone else to fill that vacant council seat and appointed someone to replace Nguyen.
The ensuing conflict over who were the rightful Nelsonville council members came to a head at two council meetings in April, when Powell and then Nguyen were blocked by police officers from taking a seat on the council.
The two went to court in April 2024 to get their seats back.
It’s not unusual for a case to take a year or more to work its way through the courts, and this one was no different.
In the meantime, as the court noted in its decision, there were several significant developments involving Nelsonville city government.
In November 2024, Nelsonville voters approved Issue 23, a ballot measure intended to abolish the city charter and return the city to a statutory form of government.
This set in motion plans to elect a new statutory government in November 2025 that would take over at the start of this year.
However, in August 2025 the City Council voted to repeal Issue 23, claiming it has authority under the charter to overturn citizen initiatives.
The council then tried to get the candidates for the statutory government removed from the ballot, but the Ohio Supreme Court refused this request.
In November, seven candidates were elected to seats on the statutory council and other officials were elected as well to positions in the statutory government.
Because of this election, the seats Nguyen and Powell were seeking to reclaim no longer exist, the court said.
“The voters have elected a new slate of statutory city council members, thus Nguyen and Powell’s claims that they are entitled to hold their former positions in the charter city council are moot,” the court wrote.
The court noted that Powell ran in November and now has a seat on the new statutory council.
Pending before the same court is another legal case in which the court is being asked to decide whether the new statutory government is in fact Nelsonville’s legitimate government.
The city now has two rival governments claiming legitimacy: the statutory government, and the charter government, which argues the repeal of Issue 23 nullified the transition to a statutory government.
The charter council continues to meet at City Hall and appears to have control over the city’s finances and operations. The statutory council has been meeting at The Lodge at Hocking College.
Members elected to the statutory government have filed a legal action with the appellate court asking it to rule that the charter council had no authority to overturn a citizen initiative and therefore the charter is abolished and the statutory government is in power. The charter government is asking for the opposite.
The court said in a footnote that its decision in the Nguyen and Powell case should not be read as an indication of how it may rule on the legitimacy of the Issue 23 repeal.