Supreme Court justice and Mahoning native Judi French speaks toTCTC students

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

CHAMPION

The one Mahoning County native on the Ohio Supreme Court frequently goes by Judi, even though the state’s highest court is steeped in formality and tradition.

Judith L. French, a 1980 Sebring McKinley High School graduate who’s been a justice for two years, showed students at Trumbull Career and Technical Center that she’s anything but stuffy during a presentation Friday at their school.

She took pictures with many of the girls, even a selfie or two, and was as accommodating and informal as anyone could ask.

The daughter of a schoolteacher, she spent most of her hour with the school’s four government classes answering their questions.

She explained the difference between the type of Ohio judge who works alone at the county and municipal level compared with appeals court and Supreme Court judges, who work as part of a panel.

She shared insights into the traditions the Supreme Court follows, such as the newest justices sitting in the farthest outside seats in the courtroom and showing deference to the more-senior justices when both individuals want to speak at the same time.

She explained that a marble is drawn from a leather bottle to determine which justice among the majority will write an opinion in a specific case. It means that the person writing for the majority doesn’t ask for that task and isn’t chosen for it based on his or her views, she said.

She wrote the majority opinion last month on a case with much local significance because of its impact on communities with gas and oil drilling and brine-injection activity.

She wrote that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has the “sole and exclusive authority” to regulate the state’s gas and oil industry, despite attempts by communities such as Munroe Falls to establish their own rules.

More decisions relating to the industry will be forthcoming, she added.

“The oil and gas industry is huge. It’s going to dominate the docket,” she said. “It’s really important to the state economically and also raises issues that have never been decided before.”

A wave of “property issues” is among the likely questions the court will review in the coming years, she said.

Justice French, a Republican and the only one of the seven justices who lives in Columbus, has not resided in the Mahoning Valley since she left Sebring after high school to attend Ohio State University.

But seeing aspects of the whole state has given her an appreciation for the “great teachers” she had in school, she said.

“When I come to Northeast Ohio, it feels like home,” she said, adding that she still has many relatives in Salem, Alliance and Sebring.