“Very Little Cause At All”: The Erosion of Job Security for Ohio Teachers

As education becomes an increasingly divisive partisan issue, with teachers caught in the crossfire, it is more important than ever that teachers have protection from unfair or politically-motivated terminations. The Ohio Teacher Tenure Act was enacted 80 years ago to give teachers this essential job security. However, this Note examines the bizarre fact that, after a recent series of state court opinions, the Act now gives Ohio teachers less job security than other unionized public employees. By essentially forbidding adjudicators of teacher terminations from considering proportionality, length of service, and due process, these holdings leave teachers in a far more vulnerable position than other public employees challenging their terminations. This Note argues that these holdings must be rejected not only because they are bad for teachers, but also because they are rooted in faulty legal reasoning, violate the unambiguous legislative intent of both the Ohio Teacher Tenure Act and its amendments, and defy decades of Ohio jurisprudence in favor of granting broad discretion in determining just cause.