Cassandra Rice

Why we endorsed Cassandra

Probate court is where Ohioans build and protect their chosen families. It grants marriage licenses. It decides adoptions. It rules on name changes and gender marker changes. It determines whether the person you trust most can serve as your guardian. Cassandra Rice understands exactly what that means for LGBTQ+ people, and she named it in her application to us more plainly than any candidate this cycle: the wrong judge in these proceedings can let bias, overt or covert, stand between a person and their family.

Rice has spent nearly 14 years in practice preparing for this bench. As a staff attorney in the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court, she helped build the Women's Therapeutic Court, now the RISE Docket, the county's first women-only drug treatment court, where she learned that how a judge treats a person determines whether they trust the process at all. She has served eight years on the boards of Legal Aid of Western Ohio and Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, leading both as President and Chair, and she serves as a pro bono guardian for underprivileged clients in the very court she seeks to lead.

Her commitments to our community are specific. Neutral language in court documentation. Asking every person how they wish to be addressed. Interpreters and accommodations as a baseline, not a favor. Continuous training for herself and her staff so that every case gets the same fair process. She has counseled clients through name changes, her family founded a nonprofit that clothes people through gender transitions, and out members of the Dayton legal community, including Judge Mary Wiseman, are supporting her campaign. Montgomery County families deserve a probate judge who sees all of them. Cassandra Rice will.