Justice, Interrupted: What Obstruction of Official Business Really Means in Ohio

Last week, Kimberly Wooley, a longtime cosmetology teacher at Lorain County’s Joint Vocational School, was arrested and charged with obstructing official business by the Ohio State Highway Patrol. The district has declined to comment. Wooley, for her part, has called the incident a misunderstanding based on false claims and says she’s confident her name will be cleared.

But the charge itself—obstruction of official business—has generated a familiar wave of confusion. Isn’t that just a secondary charge? Doesn’t it usually come along with something more serious?

Not in Ohio.

Under Ohio law, obstruction of official business is a fully independent crime. While it frequently arises during police investigations or enforcement actions, it doesn’t require any underlying offense to be charged. You can be arrested and convicted for obstruction alone, even if no other law was broken.

Ohio Revised Code §2921.31 defines obstruction as purposely preventing, delaying, or hampering a public official from carrying out their lawful duties. To qualify as a crime, the conduct must be intentional, and it generally must involve an affirmative act—something you do, not just something you refuse to do. Giving false information to an officer, physically interfering, or fleeing when told to stop are common examples.

Typically, obstruction of official business is charged as a second-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $750 fine. If the obstruction creates a risk of physical harm, the charge can be elevated to a fifth-degree felony. But regardless of how it’s classified, this charge is not legally dependent on any other alleged crime.

This often surprises people. In many jurisdictions, obstruction is seen as a tag-along offense, something added to a more serious charge like assault or resisting arrest. But in Ohio, obstruction is treated as a primary offense, and that gives law enforcement significant discretion.

And that’s where problems arise.

While obstruction can be a useful legal tool for maintaining order or protecting officers from interference, it’s also one of the most frequently misused charges in the Ohio criminal system. It’s often deployed in minor confrontations—traffic stops, disagreements over ID requests, public disputes—where there is little actual threat or danger. Sometimes it’s used not to punish interference, but to punish perceived disrespect.

There are well-documented cases where individuals were charged with obstruction for asking officers questions, recording interactions, or simply refusing to provide information they weren’t legally required to give. Civil rights advocates have long warned that obstruction charges can serve as a “catch-all” for officers who feel challenged or want to justify an arrest that might not otherwise hold legal weight.

Because the standard for what counts as “obstructing” is relatively broad—and largely left to the discretion of the officer involved—it invites subjectivity. That discretion can be misused, particularly in heated or ambiguous situations. The result is that some people are criminalized not for interfering with law enforcement in any meaningful way, but for asserting their rights, being slow to comply, or challenging the basis for a stop.

In Wooley’s case, we don’t yet know the full circumstances behind the charge. No details have been released, and no other offenses appear to be alleged. But her case illustrates the legal reality that a person in Ohio can be arrested and charged for obstruction alone—and that law enforcement doesn’t have to prove any additional wrongdoing to proceed with prosecution.

There’s an important distinction to make here. This is not about whether every use of the charge is illegitimate. There are certainly situations where obstruction is a valid and necessary response to someone intentionally interfering with a lawful duty. But the concern lies in how often the law is applied in borderline or questionable cases—where the line between interference and noncompliance, or between assertiveness and obstruction, is blurry at best.

That tension—between preserving public order and respecting individual rights—is at the heart of the obstruction debate.

Justice, when it’s interrupted, must be protected. But as Ohio law stands now, interruption is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. And the beholder, far too often, is an officer with the unilateral power to decide what counts.

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