The Sept. 14 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aldrich thrust Ohio into an unfolding national debate over how judges can campaign.

"One of the hottest legal battles going on now is the extent to which the state, through its canons of judicial conduct, can restrict candidates' speech," said Anthony Champagne, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Dallas.

In granting a temporary injunction against the state, Aldrich decided in favor of Judge William O'Neill and his contention that state courts' rules limiting candidates' campaign behavior violates the U.S. Constitution.

The First Amendment "does not permit the state to dictate what information voters may be 'trusted' with," Aldrich said.

For voters' free speech rights "to mean anything, judicial candidates must be allowed to impart whatever information they wish about their party membership or affiliation, their views on political legal issues and their personal philosophy - without restriction," the judge said.

O'Neill has publicly criticized the Ohio Supreme Court for its rulings on school funding, saying the court was wrong for removing itself from the case.

O'Neill, a Democrat on the state appeals court in Warren, is running against Justice Terrence O'Donnell, a Republican appointee campaigning for his first full six-year term on the court.

"It's preposterous to say school funding is unconstitutional, then say on the next page we're not going to do anything about it," O'Neill said.

O'Donnell will continue to follow all court campaign rules, believing Aldrich's decision affects only O'Neill's case, said spokeswoman Angela Snyder.

Another Democratic candidate for the high court, C. Ellen Connally, a former Cleveland Municipal Court judge, has made similar comments publicly about the court's school-funding decisions, said Dan Trevas, spokesman for the state Democratic Party.

Connally is running against Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer, a Republican.

The Supreme Court ruled three times that the state's system for funding education was unconstitutional before ending the 12-year-old lawsuit that led to billions of additional dollars spent on schools but no large-scale changes.

As a result of Aldrich's ruling, the disciplinary arm of the Supreme Court said it has halted investigating whether court candidates violated court rules by identifying political parties on campaign literature or not giving their full court titles.

A third Democratic Supreme Court candidate, Cleveland Judge Nancy Fuerst, agreed with those two elements of Aldrich's ruling. She doesn't feel the ruling allows her to give her opinion on issues because of the rules for candidates' campaigns.

She declined to address O'Neill's remarks on school funding.