Politics in Ohio is known to take some weird turns now and then, but this may take the cake.
As hard as it might be to imagine, this year’s race for control of the Ohio Supreme Court could turn on the question of whether “boneless” chicken wings can have bones.
Yes, you read that right.
Boneless chicken wings. With bones.
The race for three seats on the Ohio Supreme Court is one of the most consequential contests on the statewide ballot this year.
It’s a struggle for control of the state’s highest court, which operates today with a 4-3 conservative Republican majority with much at stake — looming decisions on reproductive rights, redistricting, and a host of other nuanced and contentious issues.
But the most effective campaign issue may be one that the newest justice, former Hamilton County prosecutor Joe Deters, and his GOP colleagues gifted the Democrats recently.
It could well be the gift that keeps on giving, right through the Nov. 5 election.
It is an issue that is easy to understand, not in the least complicated, and where most people would naturally side with the little guy.
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Deters, the least experienced justice on the court, wrote the opinion in the seven-year-old case of Michael Berkheimer of Butler County, who sued a Hamilton-area restaurant, Wings on Brookwood, and its suppliers.
Berkheimer said he suffered serious injury — a torn esophagus — from a chicken wing he purchased off the restaurant’s “boneless wings” menu. Berkheimer ended up having two surgeries because there was a 1 3/8-inch sliver of bone in the wing he ordered from the restaurant’s “boneless wings” menu.
The case ended up before the Ohio Supreme Court after a court in Butler County and a state district appeals court rejected his claim.
But Berkheimer maintained that the lower courts missed the point — the relevant question, he argued, was whether he could have reasonably expected to find a bone in his “boneless” chicken wing.
Deters, in the opinion he wrote for the Republican majority, said Berkheimer’s assumption was wrong.
“No person would conclude that a restaurant’s use of the word ‘boneless’ on a menu was the equivalent of the restaurant’s ‘warranting the absence of bones,’ ” Deters wrote.
Berkheimer, Deters said, should have “guarded against the injurious substance in his food.”
In other words, it’s all Berkheimer’s fault.
That line left Justice Michael Donnelly, writing the dissent for the Democratic minority, scratching his head. He compared it to the sophistry of Jabberwocky in the Lewis Carroll poem, where words have no meaning.
“Actually, that is exactly what people think it is,’’ Donnelly said of Deters’ argument. “Not surprisingly, it is also what the dictionaries say — ‘boneless’ means ‘without a bone.’ ’’
A word for the uninitiated here: Boneless wings are not chicken wings with the bones removed. They are pieces of chicken breasts molded roughly into the shape of a chicken wing, breaded and deep-fried. And served with sauce.
In Berkheimer’s case, he ordered Parmesan garlic sauce.
A quick look at the menu of Wings on Brookwood shows the clear distinction between wings with bones and wings without bones. The menu first lists “Wings.” Right below that is another menu item — “Boneless Wings.”
How much clearer could that possibly be?
But Deters and his fellow Republicans on the Ohio Supreme Court say it was Berkheimer’s fault.
And now, Ohio Democrats are chomping at the bit to use as a campaign issue.
“This decision will strike voters as just plain weird,’’ said former Ohio Democratic Party chairman David Pepper. “I think most voters will look at this and say, ‘What’s going on here? This decision makes no sense.' ”
LIz Walters, the current chair of the Ohio Democratic Party, said she is hearing reports from the party's door-knocking volunteers that the boneless wing kerfuffle is making an impression on voters.
"Without any prompting from the volunteers, voters are asking what this is all about," Walters said. "It seems to them to be unhinged and very weird."
Pepper said he believes it fits a pattern where the GOP majority on the court routinely sides with corporate interests.
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But it goes beyond the issue of boneless chicken wings, Pepper said.
“If you think that decision is weird, imagine what this court may do on issues like redistricting or reproductive rights,” Pepper said. “The Ohio Supreme Court elected in November is going to have deal with these issues.
“Do we really want those issues to be decided by people who think boneless chicken wings can have bones?”
