A Litigator, Not a Bureaucrat

Licking County Juvenile Court was one of the first courts Michael practiced in, and it’s where he has spent the most time as a lawyer. He’s stood beside families facing dependency and neglect proceedings, represented children charged with serious offenses, and argued some of the most consequential issues that occur in juvenile court. He has been in that building when things went right. And when they didn’t.

As a guardian ad litem, the court appointed him to represent children who had no one else to speak for them. That meant home visits, hard conversations with families in crisis, and walking into hearings to tell a judge what a child actually needed: not what was politically convenient, not what was easiest for the system to process. Michael has also represented parents fighting to keep their families together. Ohio law recognizes that parents have a fundamental right to raise their children, and requires the court to make reasonable efforts toward family reunification. That’s not a political position; it’s the law, and he’ll follow it.

Michael still takes court-appointed criminal defense cases today, the kind where a person is counting on someone to show up and fight for them. He brings what he sees back to the classroom so that his students get a firsthand look at the real constitutional questions that come up: when does the government have the right to act, and when does it go too far?

He Teaches the Constitution. He believes in it.

Michael teaches American Government at Watkins Memorial High School in Pataskala. He also facilitates a college-level American Government course through Columbus State Community College.

One of the first things his classes do together is draft and sign a classroom constitution. Students propose and vote on amendments, many of which have actually been adopted. While the constitution outlines classroom rules and expectations, it also grants rights to the students that no one can take away. Michael didn’t have to set it up that way, but he chose to give his students a voice: real rules, agreed to in advance, that apply to everyone in the room. Government isn’t just something that happens to you in a textbook; it’s an agreement about how power should work and what the government isn’t allowed to do.

The Constitution isn’t just a talking point for Michael. He’s stood up for constitutional principles in both the courtroom and the classroom for his whole career. If elected judge, he’ll do the same for Licking County.

He Doesn’t Flinch

In 2018, Michael joined a county-wide effort to fix something that had been broken for a long time. Court-appointed attorneys in Licking County were being paid $35 per hour, a rate unchanged since the early 1990s and the second-lowest rate in the state. Lawyers who could afford to walk away from that work were doing exactly that. Judges were having a difficult time recruiting attorneys and, as a result, people who needed representation the most were losing access to experienced counsel.

On July 23rd, 2018, Michael and his colleagues stopped taking new appointments to bring awareness to the issue. The sitting juvenile court judge summoned Michael into his courtroom, looked at him from the bench, and asked if he had signed the letter. Michael said yes, he had signed it, and that he stood by it. The judge didn’t blink: he told him he was being permanently removed from the juvenile court appointment list. Even though court appointments were a significant part of his income at the time, he accepted whatever consequence came with standing up for quality representation in Licking County. On July 24th, the county commissioners raised the rate. Nobody got removed from anything, because nobody backed down.

In 2024, he was part of the negotiating team for the Southwest Licking Education Association, representing close to 300 teachers in their contract negotiations. The team went out and talked with teachers across the district to find out what they actually needed. What they came back with included significant pay raises, a restructured salary schedule, classroom size limits, and an academic freedom clause. When you trust someone to represent you at the table, that’s what it should look like.

That’s what he’ll do for you. He’ll stand up to powerful people, even when it’s hard, and do the right thing. That’s not a campaign promise. It’s already on the record.