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Ohio $15 Minimum Wage Initiative (2025)

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Ohio Minimum Wage Increase Initiative
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Election date
November 4, 2025
Topic
Minimum wage
Status
Not on the ballot
Type
Constitutional amendment		Origin
Citizens

The Ohio Minimum Wage Increase Initiative will not appear on the ballot in Ohio as an initiated constitutional amendment on November 4, 2025.

The ballot initiative would have increased the minimum wage to $15 per hour on January 1, 2026. The minimum wage would increase to $12.75 on January 1, 2025 and then increase to $15.00 on January 1, 2026.[1]

Text of measure

Full text

The full text of the ballot measure is available here.

Support

Raise the Wage Ohio is leading the campaign in support of the ballot initiative.[2]

Supporters

Officials

Arguments

  • U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D): "Right now, working-class people are struggling to pay rent, pay for food, send their kids to college, deal with retirement issues, deal with healthcare issues, while the very richest people in this country are becoming much richer. And one way to improve life for working people is to move the minimum wage to a living wage."

Opposition

Opponents

Organizations

  • Ohio Restaurant & Hospitality Alliance

Arguments

  • John Barker, president and CEO of the Ohio Restaurant & Hospitality Alliance: "Eliminating the tipped wage would negatively impact their earning potential. It will also force restaurant operators to raise menu prices to cover higher labor costs, which would drive further inflation. It would also decrease their workforce, as we have seen in Washington, D.C., where the tip credit is being eliminated. There’s no question that our industry does not want the tip credit eliminated."


Path to the ballot

Process in Ohio

See also: Laws governing the initiative process in Ohio

In Ohio, the number of signatures required to get an initiated constitutional amendment placed on the ballot is equal to 10 percent of the votes cast in the preceding gubernatorial election. Ohio also requires initiative sponsors to submit 1,000 signatures with the initial petition application. Ohio has a signature distribution requirement, which requires that signatures be gathered from at least 44 of Ohio's 88 counties. Petitioners must gather signatures equal to a minimum of half the total required percentage of the gubernatorial vote in each of the 44 counties. Petitions are allowed to circulate for an indefinite period of time. Signatures are due 125 days prior to the general election that proponents want the initiative on.

The requirements to get an initiated constitutional amendment certified for the 2026 ballot:

County boards of elections are responsible for verifying signatures, and the secretary of state must determine the sufficiency of the signature petition at least 105 days before the election. If the first batch of signatures is determined to be insufficient, the petitioners are given a ten-day window to collect more signatures.

Stages of this ballot initiative

  • On October 20, 2022, Raise the Wage Ohio filed a petition for the initiative. On October 28, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R) certified the petition form, which was sent to Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R).[3] The Ohio Ballot Board certified the petition as meeting the state's single-subject rule on November 7, 2022.[4]
  • On April 5, 2023, Attorney General Yost announced that the first round of 1,000 signatures was certified, and confirmed that the submitted summary of the ballot measure was a fair and truthful statement of the proposed initiative. On April 18, 2023, the Ohio Ballot Board unanimously certified the measure and stated that it contained a single proposed constitutional amendment.[5] On May 15, 2023, the Raise the Wage Coalition started their signature campaign for the Ohio 2024 ballot.[6]
  • On July 3, 2024, the Raise the Wage campaign announced that it did not gather enough signatures to submit by the deadline for the 2024 ballot, and will instead gather signatures for the 2025 ballot.

See also

External links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Ohio Attorney General, "Initiative Text," accessed January 9, 2024
  2. ↑ Raise the Wage OH, "Homepage," accessed June 24, 2024
  3. ↑ Ohio Attorney General, "List of petitions submitted to the Attorney General's Office," accessed November 22, 2022
  4. ↑ Ohio Secretary of State, "Ballot Board approval of the proposed constitutional amendment, entitled 'Raise the Wage Ohio,' as a single amendment," November 7, 2022
  5. ↑ Ohio Attorney General, "Raise the Wage Third Submission," April 5, 2023
  6. ↑ WOSO, "Campaign to raise Ohio's minimum wage to $15 an hour kicks off with signature gathering effort," April 24, 2023
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