Ohio Primary Law Research Guide: Administrative Decisions

The Administrative Procedure Act, ORC Ch. 119, provides for enforcement of regulations and agency statutes through quasi-judicial actions.  Many agency cases are informally adjudicated, ie, the Ohio Rules of Evidence are not strictly applied and the Ohio Rules of Civil Procedure do not apply.  Agency decisions are required to be entered in the agency's journal, but they are not required to be published (ORC 119.09).  Agency orders may be appealed to a higher agency authority according to the agency enabling statute.  A final agency decision may be appealed to the common pleas court as allowed by the Administrative Procedure Act, the agency enabling statute, general appellate procedure defined in ORC Chapter 2506 or other statute.  For more details on administrative agency adjudications, see the Ohio Administrative Law Handbook (a volume of the Ohio Administrative Code KFO 34.5 O35).

To access Ohio agency decisions on Lexis Advance, click on Browse Sources, and narrow by Ohio and Administrative Materials.  Or, prefilter by Ohio, Administrative Materials and postfilter by agency.

 Chart of Agency Opinions Accessible via C|M|LAW Library

Some agency decisions are unpublished and hard to find. For example:

Decisions of the Ohio Unemployment Compensation Review Commission - formerly the Ohio Unemployment Compensation Board of Review - are available for a small fee from the Banks-Baldwin research department (216-520-5586).  The Ohio Supreme Court library also collects these decisions.