Toledo Edison Co. v. City of Bryan

We are asked to determine whether a municipality has constitutional authority to purchase electricity solely for direct resale to an entity that is not an inhabitant of the municipality and not within the municipality’s limits. For the following reasons we find that the answer is no.

Many of Ohio’s inhabitants are provided electrical service by public utilities. The Ohio Public Utilities Commission has divided Ohio into territories pursuant to the Certified Territories Act (“CTA”). See R.C. 4933.82. Under the CTA, each electricity-producing public utility is assigned a territory under which it…