In October 2017, the Supreme Court of Ohio in the case of State of Ohio v. (Orlando) Batista (2017), 151 Ohio St.3d 584, 2017-Ohio-8304, held that because ORC Section 2903.11(B)(1) — criminal felonious assault — regulates conduct, not speech, it does not violate the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and it is rationally related to the State’s legitimate interest in preventing the transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to sexual partners who may not be aware of the risk and, therefore, does not violate the Equal Protection Clauses of either the United States or Ohio Constitutions.

Defendant Batista maintained that ORC 2903.11(B)(1), which prohibits those persons with knowledge of their HIV status from engaging in sexual conduct with another person without disclosing that knowledge to the other person prior to engaging in the sexual conduct was a content based regulation that compels speech in violation of the…