Susan Baker Ross

Susan Baker Ross, a Summit County Common Pleas Court judge, presided over the criminal bribery trial of former FirstEnergy executives Charles Jones and Mike Dowling, accused of paying a $4.3 million bribe to the former head of Ohio's utility regulator to help pass House Bill 6 and secure favorable treatment for the company. Three major Ohio newspapers — the Akron Beacon Journal, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the Columbus Dispatch — sued in the Ohio Supreme Court to challenge portions of a media participation order Baker Ross had issued restricting coverage of the trial.

The Ohio Supreme Court sided with the newspapers, finding that Baker Ross's order amounted to a prior restraint on speech — a judicial order forbidding publication before it occurs — which the U.S. Supreme Court has described as "the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights." The trial itself ended in a mistrial after jurors could not reach a verdict.