Jake Zuckerman, Ohio Capital Journal

A panel of judges resurrected a lawsuit against Ohio State University brought by sex abuse victims who allege the school knew of and covered up the serial predation of a physician it employed.

In a split ruling from the judges on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals released Wednesday, Judge Karen Nelson Moore writing for the majority ruled that the decades that have passed since the abuse occurred don’t block the Title IX lawsuit from moving forward.

The lawsuit centers on conduct of Richard Strauss, who served as team doctor for 17 different sports and as a physician at the student health center. During his tenure, Strauss committed at least 1,429 sexual assaults and 47 rapes, according to Moore’s ruling. Most the victims were men seeing him for personal or athletic clinical visits. ...

The customer, David, called the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio and told an intake representative that after he got home from a doctor’s appointment he discovered his power had been cut off due to nonpayment.

“He said that he is on oxygen and needed electricity,” said Robert Fadley, the director of the PUCO’s service monitoring and enforcement department in an email to the agency’s chief.

“Our representative noted that it was clear from talking to him that he was struggling to breathe.” ...

The sponsor of legislation that would ban nearly all abortions in Ohio said babies conceived via rape or incest still have a right to life.

Rep. Jean Schmidt, a Cincinnati area Republican, said on conservative talk radio earlier this week that her bill is likely to pass in the legislative session after the November elections.

“I do believe we have the votes in both chambers, and we have the full support of the governor on this bill,” she said....

Also in a 2-1 decision, in April, the judges representing the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio Eastern Division had set May 28 as the deadline for the commission to come up with a viable plan before the federal court would intervene to implement Map 3, which passed along partisan lines by Republicans on the commission in February and has been rejected twice by the state supreme court as unconstitutional. The court issued their ruling May 27 with it taking effect at midnight Saturday.

U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Amul R. Thapar and U.S. Western District of Kentucky Judge Benjamin J. Beaton, both appointed by former President Donald Trump, formed the majority. U.S. District Court Southern District of Ohio Chief Judge Algenon L. Marbley, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, opposed the decision.

The majority ruling said federal courts are instructed to give states maximal flexibility to craft their own solutions and that “federal district courts must wait to act until the last possible moment.”...

An Ohio House committee passed legislation Tuesday prohibiting social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube from “censoring” their users.

The legislation would block the companies from removing posts or expelling people from their platforms based on the “viewpoint” of users or ideas expressed in their posts. It wouldn’t apply to speech already illegal under federal law like harassment or inciting violence.

Passage comes as some of the large social media networks grapple with trends like widespread undermining among Republicans of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results, the proliferation of bunk health advice around the COVID-19 pandemic, and wholesale denial of the Holocaust....