Ohio State Motto: With God, All Things Are Possible

Ohio's state motto is With God, All Things Are Possible. The legislature adopted it effective October 1, 1959, and it is codified in the Ohio Revised Code, Section 5.06.

It is the only U.S. state motto taken word-for-word from the Bible. Ohio had no official motto from 1868 until 1959 — a gap of more than ninety years — and it was a ten-year-old boy who finally put one on the books.

In March 1958, James Mastronardo, a ten-year-old from Cincinnati, was working on a school project and flipping through an encyclopedia when he noticed that Ohio had no official state motto. He suggested his mother's favorite saying: With God, all things are possible. He later told reporters he had no idea the phrase came from the Bible.

Mastronardo collected nearly 20,000 signatures and testified before the state legislature. The House voted unanimously to adopt the motto. Governor Michael DiSalle signed the bill into law, and it took effect on October 1, 1959.

Ohio had held an official motto before — Imperium In Imperio (Latin for "an empire within an empire") — but the legislature repealed it in 1868, leaving the state without one for more than ninety years.

In 1997, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit arguing the motto violated the separation of church and state. A three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit ruled 2-1 in 2000 that it was unconstitutional. The full Sixth Circuit reversed that decision in 2001, ruling 9-4 that the motto qualified as "ceremonial deism" and did not violate the First Amendment.