Ohio's Supported Decision-Making Bill: What SB 35 Means for Disability Rights

You're an adult with a developmental disability in Ohio. A major decision is coming — a medical procedure, a financial commitment, a housing change. Your options, until now, have been stark: navigate it alone, or have a court declare you legally incompetent and hand decision-making authority to a guardian. Ohio Senate Bill 35 proposes something different — and the debate around it reveals exactly how difficult it is to protect autonomy and prevent exploitation at the same time.

SB 35 would formally recognize supported decision-making (opens in new window) in Ohio law, allowing adults with developmental disabilities to designate trusted supporters who help them understand information, weigh options, and communicate decisions — without surrendering the legal authority to make those decisions. The bill passed the Ohio Senate unanimously and is now before the House Children and Human Services Committee. What happens next matters far beyond Ohio's borders.

What SB 35 Actually Does

The mechanics of SB 35 are worth understanding precisely, because the details carry real weight.

Under the current draft, all adults with developmental disabilities are presumed competent unless a court determines otherwise — a foundational shift in legal posture. An adult who voluntarily enters a written supported decision-making plan must do so with informed consent, signed before a notary or two independent witnesses. Supporters can explain options, help communicate decisions, and access relevant medical or financial information. The adult retains full authority: they can act without the supporter, limit what the supporter does, and end the arrangement at any time.

Critically, supporters carry a fiduciary duty — a legal obligation to prioritize the adult's interests over their own, with liability for breaches. The Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities would create model plans and educational materials.

This is not guardianship. A guardian is appointed through probate court after a finding of legal incompetence and gains authority to make certain decisions for the person. Supported decision-making keeps that authority with the individual.

Community: Who Does This Serve, and What Do They Actually Need?

The community dimension here is the whole point. Attorney Derek Graham, whose daughter has Down syndrome, testified that people who had never spent time with his daughter were making assumptions about her capacity. That pattern — diagnostic label substituting for individual assessment — is precisely what SB 35 challenges.

The bill's presumption of competence aligns with the disability rights principle that restrictions on autonomy should be the exception, not the default. Sen. Michele Reynolds framed it plainly to the committee: "We need to coach individuals to be able to self-actualize and live to their fullest potential."

But community input also surfaces a hard question: adults with developmental disabilities are not a monolithic group. Some have robust informal support networks. Others are isolated, with limited access to trustworthy supporters. The bill's effectiveness depends heavily on whether the people it's designed to serve can actually access it equitably — and whether the model plans ODDD creates are genuinely usable by people with varying communication needs and literacy levels.

Operational: Can Ohio's Systems Actually Run This?

Supported decision-making operates largely outside the courts — that's a feature, not a bug, from an autonomy standpoint. But it creates a real monitoring gap.

Guardianship, for all its problems, has a court structure around it. Probate judges, annual reports, legal counsel. Supported decision-making agreements under SB 35 would be private written documents, witnessed and notarized, with no mandatory registration or oversight body. The fiduciary duty is legally meaningful — but enforcing it requires someone to bring a claim, which presupposes the person being exploited can recognize and report that exploitation.

The question the House committee is wrestling with — who makes sure the supporter isn't exerting undue influence? — doesn't have a clean answer in the current bill. ODDD gets tasked with creating educational materials, but not with any ongoing monitoring role. This is a genuine operational gap. Organizations implementing complex frameworks without clear accountability structures tend to see the same pattern: legal victories that don't translate into sustained protection.

Risk: The Legal Exposure Runs Both Directions

The risk analysis here is genuinely two-sided, which makes it more interesting than most policy questions.

For the state, the risk of not passing SB 35 is continued reliance on a guardianship system that the ADA's integration mandate (opens in new window) and the broader disability rights framework have increasingly challenged as unnecessarily restrictive. Ohio law already requires judges considering guardianship to weigh less restrictive alternatives — SB 35 gives that requirement a concrete option to point to.

For individuals, the risk calculus is different. A supported decision-making agreement that goes wrong — a supporter who manipulates financial decisions, a family member who uses the arrangement to control rather than support — may be harder to unwind than a guardianship, precisely because there's less court infrastructure around it.

The fiduciary duty provision is the bill's primary risk mitigation tool. Whether it's sufficient depends on enforcement — and enforcement depends on people knowing their rights and having pathways to assert them.

Provision	Protection Offered	Remaining Gap
Presumption of competence	Shifts burden from individual to challenger	Doesn't address capacity fluctuation over time
Written agreement + notarization	Creates documentary record	No central registry or court oversight
Fiduciary duty with liability	Legal recourse for exploitation	Requires individual to initiate claim
Adult can end arrangement at any time	Preserves exit option	Assumes adult can recognize and act on exploitation
ODDD model plans and materials	Standardizes format, builds awareness	No monitoring or compliance role specified

Strategic: The Political Moment Is Real

SB 35 passed the Ohio Senate unanimously. That's significant. Bipartisan consensus on disability policy is rare enough that it signals genuine strategic alignment — the bill's sponsors, Republican Sens. Jerry Cirino and Michele Reynolds, framed it as both a civil rights measure and a practical alternative to an overburdened guardianship system.

The strategic opportunity is to use that consensus to strengthen the bill's accountability mechanisms before it passes, rather than after. Adding a voluntary registry, a reporting pathway to ODDD, or a requirement that supporters complete basic training wouldn't undermine the autonomy rationale — it would make the framework durable enough to survive its first exploitation case without triggering a backlash that rolls back the whole approach.

The broader question worth sitting with: what does it mean for disability rights when the strongest protections against exploitation require individuals to self-advocate within a system that has historically underestimated their capacity to do so? SB 35 is built on a correct premise — that adults with developmental disabilities are presumed competent and deserve meaningful autonomy. The implementation challenge is building the support infrastructure that makes that autonomy real rather than nominal.

What Practitioners Should Watch

For disability rights attorneys, advocates, and service providers in Ohio, the immediate priority is the House Children and Human Services Committee process. The bill's accountability gap is addressable through amendment — this is the moment to push for it.

Specific amendments worth proposing:

• Voluntary registry: A confidential registry of supported decision-making agreements (with opt-out available) would create visibility without court involvement.
• Reporting pathway: Require ODDD to accept and track reports of suspected exploitation, creating an enforcement mechanism that doesn't depend on individuals navigating the court system.
• Supporter training: Basic training on fiduciary duty, communication, and conflict of interest would strengthen the framework without creating barriers to entry.
• Periodic check-ins: Optional ODDD outreach at 12 and 24 months to verify the arrangement is still working as intended.

For practitioners in other states: supported decision-making legislation (opens in new window) has passed in more than 20 states, with varying accountability structures. Ohio's debate is a live case study in what the next generation of these frameworks needs to get right. The Pacific ADA Center's resources on self-determination and legal capacity (opens in new window) offer useful context for how these frameworks interact with federal disability rights law.

The CORS framework points toward the same conclusion from multiple directions: SB 35 gets the community vision right, faces real operational gaps, carries two-directional risk, and has genuine strategic momentum. The path forward is to use that momentum to close the gaps before the bill becomes law — not after the first exploitation case makes headlines.