The entrance to the Ohio State Teachers Retirement System headquarters in Columbus. (Photo by Marty Schladen, Ohio Capital Journal.)
Ohio educators will keep their voices on the retired teachers’ pension fund board for now due to an appellate court upholding a temporary block on a new state law that would have eliminated them. After this court loss, the Republican Ohio House speaker wants to remove judicial power to prevent one county’s judges from determining statewide law.
The state relies on teachers to educate the next generation of leaders.
“We all take part in helping children to grow and to benefit and hopefully flourish in their lives,” retired teacher Mary Binegar said.
And half a million active and retired teachers like Binegar rely on the State Teachers’ Retirement System (STRS) to help take care of them when their teaching days are done.
However, she stated that the state has altered the deal by changing the STRS board.
“As a person that depends on that pension, it’s really frightening, because I know that if they make decisions that are not in the best long-term interests of educators, that affects my life, my livelihood,” she said.
A last-minute provision inserted in the state budget, signed into law in July, changed how educators are heard.
It changed the makeup of the board from seven elected teachers — five contributing and two retired — to three elected after seats are phased out over several years.
Two of the educator seats will be for actives and only one retiree seat.
Each elected member will be able to finish their term, but once they term out, four of the seven seats will not be refilled.
Those four educator seats will be filled with newly appointed members.
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Right now, the governor gets to appoint one investment expert. The Speaker of the House and the Senate president jointly appoint an expert. The treasurer gets an appointee, and so does the director of the Department of Education and Workforce.
Under the law, the treasurer will get two appointees, the legislative leaders will get one each and one combined, equalling three. The chancellor of the Department of Higher Education will get one, and the governor and the Department of Education and Workforce each get one.
Ohio Education Association (OEA), the Ohio Federation of Teachers (OFT), and the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors (OC AAUP) sued the state, arguing the board changes are “unconstitutional and discriminatory.”
“It’s just not fair — not being treated like the other pension systems, not going through the process, not being transparent,” OEA President Jeff Wensing said.
The lawsuit alleges that the policy violates educators’ right to equal protection under the law because only STRS was changed, not the other four Ohio public employee pension funds.
Each of the other boards gives more seats to elected members than to political appointees.
The educators also take issue with the manner in which the provision was passed, without having it be considered on at least three different days, and that it was included in legislation that had more than one subject.
The budget, which was thousands of pages, covered everything from tax policy to STRS to LGBTQ+ rights.
Republican leaders claim there is good reason to change the board.
“I think there’s been pretty widespread concern about some of the management of the state teachers’ retirement system,” House Finance Chair Brian Stewart, R-Ashville, said during the budget process.
Stewart added that he helped add this provision into the budget because of the “last several years of turmoil and lawsuits and questionable investments,” he said.
In summary, there has been constant fighting, two board resignations, and allegations of both public corruption schemes and the mishandling of funds. There has been a senior staff dismissal and at least two senior staff resignations.
A 14-page whistleblower memo given to Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine in May alleged a massive public corruption scandal brewing and moving quickly within STRS.
Attorney General Dave Yost soon after filed a lawsuit to remove former members Wade Steen and Rudy Fichtenbaum from the board, stating they were participating in a contract-steering “scheme” that could directly benefit them.
The lawsuit accuses the pair of “colluding” with investment startup QED Technologies, run by former Ohio Deputy Treasurer Seth Metcalf and Jonathan (JD) Tremmel, to secure a contract giving them 70% of the STRS assets — about $65 billion at the time.
The memo accuses QED of helping to elect board members who may be more sympathetic to their proposal.
Fichtenbaum and Steen adamantly deny any and all allegations against them, and are currently fighting in court against Yost.
Meanwhile, our 2024 investigation revealed that STRS was, once again, moving to hire a firm that allegedly had a lack of experience and personal ties to the board leaders. The consultants didn’t end up getting the deal following our story.
We have continued investigating the alleged scheme throughout the past year — including an interview with DeWine.
He expressed his deep concerns exclusively following our April 2025 report, in which we revealed hundreds of text messages about the relationship between Steen and members of QED.
Asked about the constitutionality of the board changes and previous comments that he didn’t think the board needed to change, DeWine said, “Well, of course I don’t think it was unconstitutional, but ultimately that’s a decision that has to be made by the courts.”
But educators got a win.
The Tenth District Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court’s temporary restraining order (TRO) before the case had its first hearing to decide on if there should be a preliminary injunction, another way to stop a law from going into effect during trial proceedings.
The case, being heard in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, has a hearing on Friday to decide if the law should be paused from going into effect.
Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman, R-Lima, isn’t happy with the judge’s block.
“The General Assembly has the authority constitutionally to decide who’s on those boards,” Huffman said.
While he thinks that this provision’s restraining order isn’t a “big deal, it’s not an imminent problem,” he said that this is an example of a greater issue.
Judicial power
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One county judge shouldn’t be able to determine statewide policy, Huffman claimed. After this ruling, he wants to make changes to judicial power as well.
“A bill that’s passed by the legislature, signed by the governor, went through the whole process — one judge someplace in Ohio is shutting that down,” he said. “I think we need to deal with that problem.”
When Huffman was Senate president during the last General Assembly, he and his caucus quickly put a provision into an unrelated bill that would allow the state to appeal TROs and preliminary injunctions made by county judges.
Right now, the state is unable to challenge non-permanent decisions.
When H.B. 305 passed the Senate that day, Huffman told reporters that this was important to rein in judges and trust the legislative process.
That same morning, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected the state’s attempt to narrow a TRO on the transgender gender affirming care ban law.
Questioned about his motives, he explained that the urgency for the provision wasn’t just about the transgender care case, but said it had been an issue in “many circumstances.”
He cited a Cincinnati court’s block on abortion bans.
Educators argue that all of this is a power grab and that the lawmakers just didn’t like that the board gave a bump in cost-of-living adjustments for retirees.
In response to Huffman’s comments, Wensing sent a statement talking about the importance of the judicial system and the separation of powers.
“Unfortunately, Speaker Huffman disagreed with the county court’s decision and now wants to change the rules of the process to create a system that may be more favorable to him. That kind of behavior would be inappropriate on a playground—and it’s just as concerning when it comes from our state leaders,” Wensing said.
“We must stand together to stand up against these attacks on the Constitution, just like we’re standing up to Speaker Huffman’s attacks on Ohio’s public school educators and their right to have a voice in the future of their own retirement security. If Speaker Huffman insists on trying to change the law, we look forward to seeing that new law challenged in court— starting at the county court level.”
Follow WEWS statehouse reporter Morgan Trau on X and Facebook.
This article was originally published on News5Cleveland.com and is published in the Ohio Capital Journal under a content-sharing agreement. Unlike other OCJ articles, it is not available for free republication by other news outlets as it is owned by WEWS in Cleveland.
