Ohio Rev. Code § 9.68 is the operative state preemption statute for firearms in Ohio. It declares the right to keep and bear arms a "fundamental...
Reviewed by Will Luker, Founder of CCW Hub. USCCA Training Counselor, USCCA Certified Instructor, NRA Certified Instructor, Law Enforcement.
Ohio Rev. Code § 9.68 is the operative state preemption statute for firearms in Ohio. It declares the right to keep and bear arms a "fundamental individual right that predates the United States Constitution and Ohio Constitution," finds a statewide need for "uniform laws throughout the state regulating the ownership, possession, purchase, other acquisition, transport, storage, carrying, sale, other transfer, manufacture, taxation, keeping, and reporting of loss or theft of firearms, their components, and their ammunition, and knives," and preempts any local ordinance, rule, regulation, resolution, practice, or other action that imposes "further license, permission, restriction, delay, or process" on top of state and federal law. Section 9.68(B) gives any person, group, or entity adversely affected a private right of action against the offending political subdivision for damages, declaratory relief, and injunctive relief, and requires the court to award reasonable attorney's fees, court costs, expert-witness fees, and compensation for loss of income to a prevailing plaintiff or to a plaintiff whose lawsuit causes the local rule to be repealed before final judgment.
For an Ohio CCW licensee or a permitless carrier, the practical takeaway is short. Your right to carry under Ohio Rev. Code § 2923.125 (the licensed-carry framework) and Ohio Rev. Code § 2923.12 (which now permits qualifying adults to carry concealed without a license under the constitutional-carry amendments) is the same in every Ohio city, every Ohio county, every Ohio village, and every Ohio township. No municipality, no county, and no township board can layer a local permit, a local registration scheme, a local "no firearms in the park" rule, an assault-weapon ban, a magazine-capacity limit, an ammunition tax, a local waiting period, a local liability-insurance mandate, or a local fee on the possession or carrying of a firearm or its components. Any such local rule is void from inception, exposes the political subdivision to a fee-shifted civil action under § 9.68(B), and - under language House Bill 228 added to § 9.68(A), in force since December 28, 2019 - is barred even when the local government tries to reach the conduct through "practice" or by "threat of citation, prosecution, or other legal process" rather than through a formal ordinance. The April 9, 2025 amendment enacted by Senate Bill 58 is what added the two separate guarantees that a person may keep and carry arms "without being required to have firearm liability insurance, and without being required to pay a fee for the possession of a firearm, part of a firearm, its components, its ammunition, or a knife."
Section 9.68(A), the "regulation of arms prohibited" provision, is the heart of Ohio preemption. The version below carries the April 9, 2025 effective date of Senate Bill 58, but nearly all of it has been in force since House Bill 228 (December 28, 2019) and Senate Bill 156 (September 13, 2022). Senate Bill 58's only change to divisions (A) and (B) was to insert the firearm-liability-insurance and possession-fee guarantees into the operative sentence, which is set out under "Amendment History" below. The current text reads:
"The individual right to keep and bear arms, being a fundamental individual right that predates the United States Constitution and Ohio Constitution, and being a constitutionally protected right in every part of Ohio, the general assembly finds the need to provide uniform laws throughout the state regulating the ownership, possession, purchase, other acquisition, transport, storage, carrying, sale, other transfer, manufacture, taxation, keeping, and reporting of loss or theft of firearms, their components, and their ammunition, and knives. . . . Except as specifically provided by the United States Constitution, Ohio Constitution, state law, or federal law, a person, without further license, permission, restriction, delay, or process, including by any ordinance, rule, regulation, resolution, practice, or other action or any threat of citation, prosecution, or other legal process, may own, possess, purchase, acquire, transport, store, carry, sell, transfer, manufacture, or keep any firearm, part of a firearm, its components, and its ammunition, and any knife, without being required to have firearm liability insurance, and without being required to pay a fee for the possession of a firearm, part of a firearm, its components, its ammunition, or a knife. Any such further license, permission, restriction, delay, or process interferes with the fundamental individual right described in this division and unduly inhibits law-abiding people from protecting themselves, their families, and others from intruders and attackers and from other legitimate uses of constitutionally protected arms, including hunting and sporting activities, and the state by this section preempts, supersedes, and declares null and void any such further license, permission, restriction, delay, or process."
Five things to notice in that text.
Statewide concern, expressly declared. The General Assembly did not leave the field-occupation question to judicial inference. Section 9.68(A) opens with a legislative finding that the right to bear arms is "a constitutionally protected right in every part of Ohio" and that uniform statewide regulation of firearms, their components, and their ammunition is necessary. That declaration is what carried § 9.68 through the home-rule challenge in Cleveland v. State, 128 Ohio St.3d 135, 2010-Ohio-6318, 942 N.E.2d 370 (discussed below), where the Ohio Supreme Court held that § 9.68 is a "general law" and therefore displaces conflicting municipal firearm ordinances without unconstitutionally infringing the home-rule authority granted by Section 3, Article XVIII of the Ohio Constitution.
The list of preempted subjects is broad. Ownership, possession, purchase, "other acquisition," transport, storage, carrying, sale, "other transfer," manufacture, taxation, keeping, and "reporting of loss or theft." The statute reaches firearm components and ammunition by name, and it reaches knives in parallel. The reference to taxation forecloses local firearm or ammunition excises. The reference to "reporting of loss or theft" forecloses local mandatory-reporting ordinances. The reference to "other acquisition" closes off attempts to regulate non-sale transfers (gifts, inheritance, loan) that fall outside the word "purchase."
"Practice" and "threat of citation" close the back door. This clause is not new, and it is not a 2025 addition. The original 2007 statute barred a "further license, permission, restriction, delay, or process" without saying what could carry one. House Bill 228 inserted the phrase that spells out the vehicles, and it has been in force since December 28, 2019. The First District put it in exactly those terms in Cincinnati v. State when it compared the amended statute to the original: the amended third sentence "makes two additions to the original law: expansions to the types of firearm regulations with which a municipal ordinance cannot conflict, and a clause specifying that 'further license, permission, restriction, delay, or process' (which was also included in Original R.C. 9.68) includes 'any ordinance, rule, regulation, resolution, practice, or other action or any threat of citation, prosecution, or other legal process.'" A municipality cannot accomplish through enforcement practice - a sheriff's department directive, a city-attorney charging policy, a parks-department policy memo, an unwritten "we always cite for X" rule - what § 9.68(A) forbids it from accomplishing through formal legislation. A pattern of threatening citations to enforce a void rule is itself preempted state action.
No license, no fee, no insurance. Three specific prohibitions appear in the operative sentence. A person may own, possess, purchase, acquire, transport, store, carry, sell, transfer, manufacture, or keep a firearm "without further license, permission, restriction, delay, or process," "without being required to have firearm liability insurance," and "without being required to pay a fee for the possession of a firearm, part of a firearm, its components, its ammunition, or a knife." A municipal mandatory-insurance ordinance is preempted on its face. A municipal possession fee or tax is preempted on its face. A municipal local-permit-on-top-of-state-licensing scheme is preempted on its face. Two of those three prohibitions are the newest text in the statute: the insurance guarantee and the possession-fee guarantee are what Senate Bill 58 added effective April 9, 2025. The no-further-license language they sit inside dates to the original 2007 enactment, and § 9.68(C)(6) supplies the definition of "firearm liability insurance" that the insurance guarantee runs on.
Automatically null and void. The closing clause provides that "the state by this section preempts, supersedes, and declares null and void any such further license, permission, restriction, delay, or process." There is no transition period, no presumption-of-validity defense, and no requirement that the political subdivision repeal the rule before it becomes inoperative. A preempted ordinance has no legal effect from the moment it is adopted.
Section 9.68(C)(1) is a uniquely Ohio textual feature. It defines the manner of carrying that the preemption rule reaches:
"The possession, transporting, or carrying of firearms, their components, their ammunition, or knives include, but are not limited to, the possession, transporting, or carrying, openly or concealed on a person's person or concealed ready at hand, of firearms, their components, their ammunition, or knives."
Two implications follow. First, every mode of carrying - open carry on the person, concealed carry on the person, and concealed-ready-at-hand (which includes carry in a vehicle, in a bag, or in a holster within reach) - falls inside the preempted field. A local ordinance that purports to regulate "open carry" specifically, or "concealed carry" specifically, or "carry in a vehicle" specifically, cannot escape § 9.68 by claiming it regulates only one mode. The statute reaches all of them.
Second, the "but are not limited to" phrasing closes a categorization argument. A municipality cannot invent a fourth category of carrying - "carrying in a public park," "carrying in a city building," "carrying within 500 feet of a city facility" - and claim that the legislature did not preempt it. The categories listed are illustrative. The preempted field is the field of carrying, full stop.
The remaining definitions in § 9.68(C) calibrate the statute's reach.
Section 9.68(B) is the enforcement mechanism. Unlike Texas, Ohio does not give the state Attorney General a special role in preemption enforcement. Instead, the statute opens the courthouse to "any person, group, or entity adversely affected by any manner of ordinance, rule, regulation, resolution, practice, or other action enacted or enforced by a political subdivision in conflict with division (A)."
The available remedies are broad. The plaintiff may seek "damages from the political subdivision, declaratory relief, injunctive relief, or a combination of those remedies." Damages run against the political subdivision and are paid by the political subdivision - Ohio does not have Florida's personal-fines-for-officials structure, but it does ensure that the local treasury, not just the local lawbooks, feels the consequence of a void ordinance.
The fee-shifting rule is the most important practical feature of § 9.68(B). The court "shall award reasonable expenses" - an obligation, not a discretion - in two situations:
"(1) The person, group, or entity prevails in a challenge to the ordinance, rule, regulation, resolution, practice, or action as being in conflict with division (A) of this section.
(2) The ordinance, rule, regulation, resolution, practice, or action or the manner of its enforcement is repealed or rescinded after the civil action was filed but prior to a final court determination of the action."
Subdivision (B)(2) closes the voluntary-cessation workaround. A municipality that adopts a preempted ordinance, gets sued, and quietly repeals the ordinance to moot the challenge cannot escape fees. The plaintiff is treated as the prevailing party and recovers expenses anyway. That rule is the reason most preempted Ohio ordinances are not quietly repealed in committee; they are repealed only after a fee-shifting demand has already issued.
Section 9.68(D) carves out two narrow exceptions that survive preemption. The list is closed.
The (D) list is exhaustive. There are no other exceptions to § 9.68 within § 9.68's own four corners. Other state-law authorities that operate alongside § 9.68 (the Ohio Rev. Code § 2923.126 location list of statutory off-limits places, federal restrictions, private-property rules) are not preemption "exceptions" - they are independent legal regimes that operate outside the preempted field.
Ohio preemption reaches political subdivisions. It does not reach private actors, the federal government, or the State of Ohio itself. The following are outside § 9.68's scope.
The decision that makes § 9.68 enforceable against Ohio municipalities is Cleveland v. State, 128 Ohio St.3d 135, 2010-Ohio-6318, 942 N.E.2d 370 (decided December 29, 2010). The syllabus is one sentence: "R.C. 9.68 is a general law that displaces municipal firearm ordinances and does not unconstitutionally infringe on municipal home rule authority."
The procedural posture matters. The General Assembly enacted § 9.68 in 2006 as a component of Sub. H.B. No. 347, effective March 14, 2007. Cleveland had already adopted a stack of firearm ordinances before that date, including Cleveland Codified Ordinances 627.08 (possession by minors), 627.09 (deadly weapons on private property), 627.10 (certain weapons at or about public places), 627A.02 (children's access to firearms), 628.03 (possession and sale of assault weapons), and 674.05 (handgun registration). In March 2007 the city sued the State seeking a declaration that § 9.68 was an unconstitutional infringement of its home-rule powers under Section 3, Article XVIII, an abuse of legislative power, and a violation of the one-subject rule in Section 15(D), Article II. The trial court sided with the State. The Cuyahoga County Court of Appeals reversed, holding § 9.68 was not a general law. The Ohio Supreme Court then reversed the court of appeals.
The analysis runs through the four-part general-law test from Canton v. State, 95 Ohio St.3d 149, 2002-Ohio-2005, 766 N.E.2d 963, which the court quoted from the Canton syllabus. To be a general law for home-rule purposes, a statute must "(1) be part of a statewide and comprehensive legislative enactment, (2) apply to all parts of the state alike and operate uniformly throughout the state, (3) set forth police, sanitary, or similar regulations, rather than purport only to grant or limit legislative power of a municipal corporation to set forth police, sanitary or similar regulations, and (4) prescribe a rule of conduct upon citizens generally." Prong three is a comparison, not a single requirement: the question is whether the statute regulates conduct itself or instead does nothing but hand municipalities their police power or take it away. The court of appeals had found § 9.68 failed prongs one, three, and four. The Ohio Supreme Court disagreed on all three. On prong one it held the appellate court erred by "analyzing R.C. 9.68 in a vacuum" rather than as part of Ohio's broader collection of firearm statutes, and reaffirmed Ohioans for Concealed Carry, Inc. v. Clyde, 120 Ohio St.3d 96, 2008-Ohio-4605, 896 N.E.2d 967, which had already held that "[t]he General Assembly reiterated the need for uniformity in R.C. 9.68(A), which represents an attempt by that body to nullify all municipal laws impeding uniform application of the state statute." On prong three it held § 9.68 establishes police regulations rather than merely limiting municipal legislative power. The court also held that the authorization for awards of attorney fees and costs in § 9.68 does not violate the separation-of-powers doctrine, which is the holding that keeps the § 9.68(B) fee-shifting machinery alive. The judgment was reversed and the cause remanded to the court of appeals to address the one-subject argument it had previously treated as moot.
Cleveland v. State, not any earlier decision, is the authority for the proposition that a conflicting municipal firearm ordinance is displaced by § 9.68.
Cincinnati v. Baskin, 112 Ohio St.3d 279, 2006-Ohio-6422, 859 N.E.2d 514, is frequently miscited in secondary firearm-law writing as a § 9.68 preemption win. It is the opposite, and it is not a § 9.68 case at all.
Baskin was decided December 8, 2006, roughly three months before § 9.68 took effect on March 14, 2007. The statute was not in play. The question was whether Cincinnati Municipal Code 708-37, which prohibited possession of any semiautomatic rifle with a magazine capacity of more than ten rounds, conflicted with the state weapons-control statutes for purposes of Section 3, Article XVIII of the Ohio Constitution. The syllabus holds that it did not: "Cincinnati Municipal Code 708-37, which prohibits the possession of any semiautomatic rifle with a magazine capacity of more than ten rounds, is not in conflict with R.C. 2923.17(A) for purposes of Section 3, Article XVIII of the Ohio Constitution."
The reasoning was that R.C. 2923.11(E) and R.C. 2923.17(A) prohibit possession of semiautomatic firearms designed or adapted to fire more than 31 cartridges without reloading, but they do not affirmatively permit possession of semiautomatic firearms below that threshold. Because nothing in the criminal code declared the 31-round line to be the only limit, the court concluded the General Assembly "intended to allow municipalities to regulate the possession of lower-capacity semiautomatic firearms in accordance with local conditions." The trial court had dismissed the charge against Baskin and the Hamilton County Court of Appeals had affirmed that dismissal in a split decision; the Ohio Supreme Court reversed and remanded to the trial court for further proceedings, meaning the city ordinance stood and the prosecution could go forward.
Baskin is therefore a home-rule decision that upheld a municipal magazine-capacity ordinance under the pre-§ 9.68 conflict analysis. Section 9.68 was the General Assembly's answer to exactly that result. Any statement that Baskin held § 9.68 preempted a Cincinnati ordinance inverts both the holding and the chronology. Baskin still surfaces in later § 9.68 litigation, but only through Justice O'Connor's concurring opinion, which the court of appeals in Cleveland v. State quoted for the observation that "[i]n comparison to other states, Ohio has barely touched upon the subject of firearm possession, use, transfer, and ownership" and which the Ohio Supreme Court rejected as a basis for finding § 9.68 non-comprehensive.
Section 9.68 has been amended three times since it was enacted, and which amendment added which clause matters, because a clause is only as old as the act that put it there. The Legislative Service Commission's own page for § 9.68 lists four versions: March 14, 2007 (House Bill 347), December 28, 2019 (amended by House Bill 228), September 13, 2022 (amended by Senate Bill 156), and April 9, 2025 (amended by Senate Bill 58).
Secondary writing that credits the "practice, or other action or any threat of citation, prosecution, or other legal process" language to the 2025 amendment has the date wrong, and the error is easy to check: the First District quoted that clause verbatim from the operative statute on June 26, 2024, more than nine months before S.B. 58 took effect.
Columbus and Cincinnati each mounted a constitutional challenge to § 9.68 in its amended form, and a set of private plaintiffs used § 9.68 as a sword against Columbus ordinances. Four developments define where the field stands. Everything below comes from the four slip opinions themselves, each scraped from the Ohio Supreme Court's Reporter of Decisions archive.
Columbus v. State, 2023-Ohio-2858 (10th Dist., decided August 15, 2023). Before the H.B. 228 amendment to § 9.68 took effect, Columbus sued the State in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas (No. 19CV-2281) seeking a declaration that both the original and amended versions of § 9.68 were unconstitutional, plus injunctive relief. The trial court held its preliminary-injunction hearing in May 2019 and then, on November 2, 2022, granted a preliminary injunction against the original and amended versions of § 9.68 and against H.B. 228 in its entirety, with no time limitation. The Tenth District reversed that judgment, vacated the preliminary injunction, and remanded. Its grounds were procedural and discretionary rather than a merits ruling on § 9.68: the injunction failed the specificity requirements of Civ.R. 65(D), was overbroad, rested on evidence that had gone stale between 2019 and 2022, misstated the burden of proof on two of the preliminary-injunction factors, and disregarded that a permanent injunction or a post-trial declaration was an adequate remedy at law. Having sustained the State's second and third assignments of error, the court rendered the State's first assignment of error moot, so the Tenth District did not reach whether § 9.68 as amended is constitutional.
Cincinnati v. State, 2024-Ohio-2425 (1st Dist., decided June 26, 2024). Cincinnati, its mayor, and its vice-mayor sued the State in the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas (No. A-2300389). The trial court preliminarily enjoined the 2018 and 2022 amendments to § 9.68 (H.B. 228 and S.B. 156) while leaving the original § 9.68 in effect, reasoning that the amended statute, parsed sentence by sentence, failed prongs three and four of the Canton general-law test. The First District reversed and remanded. Unlike the Tenth District, it reached the merits question: "under City of Canton, especially as applied in City of Cleveland (2010), Amended R.C. 9.68 is a 'general law' for the purposes of the Mendenhall Home Rule Amendment analysis." It rejected the city's free-speech and separation-of-powers theories as well, and held the city had not shown by clear and convincing evidence that the 2018 and 2022 amendments "change the constitutional calculus forged by City of Cleveland (2010)." The court was explicit that it considered itself bound: Supreme Court precedent "ties the city's hands."
The Columbus ordinances (December 2022 and February 2023). On December 5, 2022, Columbus City Council passed Ordinance No. 3176-2022, which among other things enacted C.C.C. 2323.32(A), barring knowing possession, purchase, sale, transfer, distribution, or importation of a "large capacity magazine," defined in C.C.C. 2323.11(N) as a magazine or similar device able to accept thirty or more rounds, and C.C.C. 2323.191(A)(1), barring "negligent storage of a firearm" at a residence when the person knows or reasonably should know a minor can gain access, subject to a safe-storage exception. On February 27, 2023, Ordinance No. 0680-2023 amended the magazine-capacity restriction and gave prosecution immunity until July 1, 2023, to people who had lawfully acquired the prohibited magazines before December 5, 2022.
Doe v. Columbus, Slip Opinion No. 2026-Ohio-1095 (Ohio Sup. Ct., decided April 1, 2026). Six anonymous plaintiffs sued Columbus in the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas (No. 23 CV H 02 0089), claiming the two ordinances violated both § 9.68 and Article I, Section 4 of the Ohio Constitution. On April 25, 2023, the trial court granted a preliminary injunction barring the city from enforcing C.C.C. 2303.05(D) and (E), 2303.14(D) and (E), 2323.11(N) and (O), 2323.191, 2323.23(E) and (F), 2323.32, and 2323.321. Columbus appealed. On November 29, 2023, the Fifth District dismissed the appeal for want of a final order. The Ohio Supreme Court reversed that dismissal 5 to 2 (Hawkins, J., writing for Kennedy, C.J., and DeWine, Deters, and Shanahan, JJ.; Fischer, J., and Brunner, J., dissenting), holding that a municipality has a sovereign interest in enforcing its own duly enacted ordinances, that an order facially enjoining that enforcement causes irreparable injury to that interest, and that such an order is therefore a final appealable order under R.C. 2505.02(B)(4). The court decided appellate jurisdiction only. It did not reach whether the Columbus ordinances survive § 9.68 or Article I, Section 4, and it remanded to the Fifth District to address the merits of the city's appeal.
This is a live docket. Read the following as a snapshot with a known expiration date, not as settled law.
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