Ohio Senate passes a bill to protect workers from government overreach

The Ohio Senate passed a bill that would codify the common law doctrine of “Piercing the Corporate Veil.”

Senate Bill 146 was sponsored by State Sens. Theresa Gavarone, R-Bowling Green, and Jane M. Tinken, R-North Canton.

“Workers need to be able to do their job without fear of some government agency suing them personally,” Gavarone said. “We have seen far too many instances of government agencies suing workers personally for simply doing their job.” 

According to Gavarone, the legislation would “codify the doctrine of ‘piercing the corporate veil’ to ensure that workers are not being sued for the violations of the company they work for.”

The bill would require a government entity to show that “the individual exercised such control over the corporate entity that the entity had no separate mind, will, or existence of its own,” “individual used this control to commit a fraud, illegal, or similarly unlawful act against the governmental entity” and “the governmental entity sustained an injury or unjust loss as a result.”

“The doctrine of ‘piercing the corporate veil’ has been part of American common law since the founding of the Virginia General Assembly in 1619,” Gavarone said. “But overzealous government agencies have been taking legal action against specific individuals for simply doing their job, rather than the corporate entity violating the law. This legislation will ensure that employers, not workers, will be held liable for these violations.”

The bill has been sent to the Ohio House for further consideration.

It wasn’t the only time when Ohio politicians attempted to protect Ohioans from government overreach. In 2021, Republican politicians in the state introduced three bills aimed at protecting Ohioans from “vaccine mandates, discrimination and Big Tech’s encroachment on individuals’ privacy rights via vaccine passports that are being implemented across the nation,” as reported by The Defender.

House Bill 248, sponsored by Rep. Jennifer Gross, R-West Chester, intended to “prohibit private and public entities from mandating, requiring or requesting the disclosure of a person’s vaccination status, participation in a vaccine passport system, registry or other ‘mechanisms’ for tracking and disclosing an individual’s private health information.”

House Bill 253, sponsored by Rep. Al Cutrona, R-Canfield, was meant to prevent “government entities from requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination to enter the state of Ohio and public sectors,” as well as protecting people’s “private medical information from being disclosed without their written consent” and banning “vaccine passport technology.”

Senate Bill 169, sponsored by Sen. Andrew Brenner, R-Delaware, was created to protect people from being forced to take a COVID-19 vaccine.

All three bills failed since they were not sent to the governor for signing.