Hypocrisy at the Ohio Supreme Court

As others have reported, a law graduate in Ohio has failed the "character and fitness" portion of the bar application because "the applicant has neglected his personal financial obligations by electing to maintain his part-time employment with the Public Defender’s Office in the hope that it will lead to a full-time position upon passage of the bar exam, rather than seeking full-time employment." His financial obligations include $170,000 in law school debt and about $16k in credit card debt.

This is, of course, absurd, a sort-of Kafkan nightmare in a world where the state's flagship public law school costs 100k over 3 years. A non-wealthy student going straight from undergrad would have to borrow the majority of that sum, and that's after the student has gone through four years of undergraduate school. The cost to attend The Ohio State University is roughly $25,000 for Ohio residents.

So for seven years at OSU - undergraduate and law school - an Ohio resident would need roughly $200,000 at minimum. Most middle- and lower-class students have no option but to borrow that money. And yet $170,000 in debt while a student tries to get a job in the law is deemed "financially irresponsible." Even a student who works part-time, 20 hours a week, for all seven years, every single week, averaging $10/hour would still have $130,000 left on the tab.

What really galls me is that every member of the Ohio Supreme Court signed the opinion without realizing their own blatant hypocrisy. Let's take a look at the justices individually (costs and fees either taken from Law School Numbers or from the school's websites; reasonable estimates made where necessary):

Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor got her B.A. from Seton Hall. She received her law degree from Cleveland-Marshall. Resident cost of attendance for Cleveland-Marshall is about $93,000 for three years. Four years of undergrad at Seton Hall? $30k a year on tuition alone, roughly 15-20k more in living expenses. For someone starting today, Justice O'Connor's education would cost at least $273,000.

Justice Paul Pfeifer "raised purebred Yorkshire hogs to finance his college education." That education? Both undergraduate and law degrees from OSU. He had his J.D. at 24, so I don't think he was working full-time before law school. Even if farm kids today had the means to raise hogs on any scale that made money, I'm pretty sure that kid isn't going to be able to bank the $200,000 needed to "finance his college education" from any profits. Someone with humble farm origins would almost certainly need to borrow most of the cost of his education today.

Justice Evelyn Lundberg-Stratton was "[b]orn to missionary parents in Bangkok" and once "returned to America alone with only a few hundred dollars in her pocket." She "[w]ork[ed] her way through school" at the University of Akron and then at OSU Law. As already noted, OSU law costs 100k for three years. Akron? For residents, it'd be 9k in tuition and an estimated 12k in living expenses every year. Relatively cheap, but the 4-year price tag is still $84k. With law school, that's $184,000 to bankroll Justice Lundberg-Stratton's education that has obviously served her well from a lower-class background. As noted, working part time would result in a 70k reduction. Where is the other $114,000 coming from?

Justice Terrence O'Donnell went to Kent State and then Cleveland-Marshall. As a resident, you can go to Kent State for under 20k a year and Cleveland-Marshall costs around 93k. $173,000. Cheap date, all things considered, although I wouldn't bet on the success of a Kent State/Cleveland-Marshall grad today.

Justice Judy Lanzinger is the "granddaughter of coal-miners" and the "first in her family to attend college." She attended the University of Toledo for both undergraduate and law school. For undergrad, Toledo costs about 7k a year in tuition. A room, board, and food estimate would be around 17k. Three years at Toledo Law costs $20k per year in tuition alone. Add living expenses and it's a 37k per year expenditure. Total for those seven years at Toledo? $207,000. How, pray tell, is a first-generation "coal-miner granddaughter" supposed to pay for that without taking out over 100k in loans?

Justice Robert Cupp hails from "rural Allen County and grew up on his family's farm." His educational choice was limited to Ohio Northern University for both his undergraduate and law degrees. That school's private. Total costs are 37k for law and 42k for undergraduate. The grand total? $279,000 for this private school education. Working may take it down to 200k. How many farm kids can even make a dent in that from their family contributions?

Justice Yvette Brown went to Ohio University and then matriculated to Ohio State for law school. As stated, the law portion, starting today, would cost 100k. Undergrad at Ohio University? Tuition is 9.5k for in-state; estimated costs would be around 14k. The total would be 94k for undergrad for a grand total of $194,000 to fund this woman's education.

To duplicate their chosen educational paths today, each of these justices would have to find more than $170,000 to fund their educations, yet, apparently, $170,000 in student loan debt makes one "financially irresponsible" unless one quits all ambitions of having a law career and takes a full-time private sector job.

I understand that many of these individuals likely had scholarships, and to be fair most of these schools are generous with scholarships today to lower the tuition costs, but someone somewhere has to pay the sticker price. Even those that get scholarships and work part-time often wind up with substantial debt.

The fact that the Ohio Supreme Court cannot recognize that financing an education is fundamentally different today and that not one of them could repeat their educational path (even with raising hogs or working 30 hours a week) without incurring absurdly-high expenses, often paid with student loans, is an indictment of how out-of-touch the Court is. Having student loan debt over $125,000 is the new normal, not some prima facie evidence of fiscal ineptitude.

For all seven justices to obviously benefit from their now-expensive educations and then categorically deny bar admission to someone who took a remarkably similar path is hypocrisy at its finest. That at least four were of humble origins and a fifth (Brown) is a minority makes the opinion all the more offensive. The average middle-class kid can simply not get a law degree without borrowing six figures or getting generous scholarships at every step of the process.

There's problems with the system, yes, but barring admission to students with normal debt loads on "character" grounds is not the solution.