Reading Room Document

Authority of Ohio Governor to Provide State Defense Attorneys for National Guardsmen Being Federally Prosecuted (Kent State).

In this memo, the OLC advised that the Ohio governor did not exceed his constitutional authority as a state official by authorizing the state attorney general’s office to defend national guardsmen in a federal prosecution arising out of the Kent State shootings. This was because the national guard, although federally funded, were regarded primarily as state officers, and because the Supreme Court had ruled that families of students at Kent State could sue national guardsmen under the theory that they acted as agents of the state during the incident.

April 24, 1974