From today's Ohio Supreme Court opinion in M.R. v. Niesen:
A common pleas court issued a temporary restraining order ("TRO") prohibiting Julie Niesen, Terhas White, and others from publishing the personal identifying information of Ryan Olthaus, a Cincinnati police officer. We are asked to decide whether a speech-restraining TRO is immediately appealable. But that issue must be left for another day because the TRO has expired and this appeal is moot….
Olthaus filed a civil complaint against Niesen, White, and several others in the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court. The complaint alleged that in the summer of 2020, Olthaus was providing security and crowd control for a public forum at a Cincinnati City Council committee meeting. At the meeting, a large crowd of citizens called for the city to defund the police. At one point Olthaus made the hand signal for "okay." Some in the crowd interpreted this gesture as a symbol of white supremacy. Among them were Niesen and White, who quickly posted on social media calling Olthaus a white supremacist.
After Niesen, White, and others accused Olthaus of being a white supremacist, Olthaus sued them for defamation, false-light invasion of privacy, and other claims. Olthaus sought to proceed under a pseudonym and to file an affidavit under seal. (In State ex rel. Cincinnati Enquirer v. Shanahan (2022), this court held that he could not proceed anonymously.) Olthaus also sought a TRO and a preliminary injunction compelling Niesen, White, and others to refrain from posting, and to remove, social-media posts referring to him as a white supremacist and restraining them from publishing his personal identifying information….
[The court issued] a TRO restraining Niesen, White, and another defendant from publicly disseminating Olthaus's personal identifying information. [The timing for the order, and the extension, is important but I'll quote it just in the body of the opinion. -EV] [Defendants appealed. -EV] The First District Court of Appeals, however, concluded that the TRO was not a final, appealable order. 2020-Ohio-4368, ¶ 13. Niesen and White appealed to this court, submitting that a court-imposed prior restraint on speech is immediately appealable, and this court accepted jurisdiction….
