An anecdote of how a high school teacher engaged in a sexual relationship with his student is the stuff of outrage. There ought to be a law, and indeed, in Ohio there is. Not just for teachers, but for a list of others as well, including clergy, mental health providers, prison guards and cops.

(5) The offender is the other person’s natural or adoptive parent, or a stepparent, or guardian, custodian, or person in loco parentis of the other person.

(6) The other person is in custody of law or a patient in a hospital or other institution, and the offender has supervisory or disciplinary authority over the other person.

(7) The offender is a teacher, administrator, coach, or other person in authority employed by or serving in a school for which the state board of education prescribes minimum standards pursuant to division (D) of section 3301.07 of the Revised Code, the other person is enrolled in or attends that school, and the offender is not enrolled in and does not attend that school.

(8) The other person is a minor, the offender is a teacher, administrator, coach, or other person in authority employed by or serving in an institution of higher education, and the other person is enrolled in or attends that institution.

(9) The other person is a minor, and the offender is the other person’s athletic or other type of coach, is the other person’s instructor, is the leader of a scouting troop of which the other person is a member, or is a person with temporary or occasional disciplinary control over the other person.

(10) The offender is a mental health professional, the other person is a mental health client or patient of the offender, and the offender induces the other person to submit by falsely representing to the other person that the sexual conduct is necessary for mental health treatment purposes.

(11) The other person is confined in a detention facility, and the offender is an employee of that detention facility.

(12) The other person is a minor, the offender is a cleric, and the other person is a member of, or attends, the church or congregation served by the cleric.

(13) The other person is a minor, the offender is a peace officer, and the offender is more than two years older than the other person.

In each of these classifications, problematic gaps are fairly obvious. The desire to err on the side of over-inclusiveness, leaving it to prosecutors to exercise discretion so as to not embarrass the legislature’s ineptitude too badly, is understandable. Wrong, but understandable. As has been noted with some regularity, criminal laws are hard to write.

But even in the context of vagaries, one classification stands out, set forth in subdivision 13. The elevation of the crime isn’t based on the nature of the relationship, but exclusively on the employment of the perpetrator.

Writing for the court, Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor noted that provisions in the sexual battery statute that apply to a teacher or a minister or a mental health provider are different in that they require an occupational relationship with the minor. The ban for officers, though, required no such relationship and as such was an “arbitrarily disparate treatment of peace officers.”

In the case before the court, the defendant was a police officer, and the underlying conduct was unbecoming.

The case involved former Waite Hill officer Matthew Mole, then 35, who was convicted in 2012 of sexual battery. Mole was caught engaging in sexual conduct with a 14-year-old boy in Richmond Heights and was tried in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.

According to the Supreme Court, Mole was contacted by the boy through an online dating site. The boy portrayed himself as an 18-year-old high school senior, and the two met. The boy’s mother caught them engaging in sexual conduct.

The nature of the offense, with or without the defendant’s occupation, isn’t likely to evoke a whole lot of sympathy. Whether the boy was 18, as he claimed, or 14, as he was, really doesn’t make a 35-year-old cop come off well.  But as despicable as the crime may be, or as much as the defendant may be hated, it plays no role in determining the facial unconstitutionality of the law under which he was convicted. This law was, well, weird.

In her opinion upholding the appellate court, O’Connor wrote that the law focuses on “those who use their professional status to take unconscionable advantage of minors, except in the case of peace officers,” O’Connor wrote. “Peace officers are liable under the statute even if they did not use their status as peace officers to identify potential victims and abuse them.”

The government has an interest in protecting minors from coercion and in keeping officers from abusing their authority, O’Connor wrote. But the section of the sexual battery addressing officers “represents a classification of persons undertaken for its own sake, something the Equal Protection Clause does not permit.”

The subtext of the prohibition is that nobody wants perverted child molesting cops. We don’t want them if they abuse their authority. We don’t want them if they don’t. This isn’t to say we want perv child molesting people in any other occupation, and particularly not in occupations where the exercise of influence or authority over others facilitates their conduct, but the Ohio lege had it out for cops in particular.

Is that a bad thing? Well, no, as a matter of policy. And the 4-3 dissent made that point.

[Justice Sharon] Kennedy wrote that the state had legitimate reasons for treating officers as a special group, and that the majority erred in that it didn’t show the law would be unconstitutional in all cases involving that group.

French, too, wrote that the state had an interest in holding officers to a higher standard.

“The General Assembly determined that the privilege of serving as a peace officer comes with the obligation to adhere to a higher standard of conduct both on and off duty,” she wrote.

It’s hard to disagree with the expectation that peace officers “adhere to a higher standard of conduct both on and off duty” than your basic child molester. But constitutionality demands a nexus between the criminal conduct in which a defendant engaged and the status for which he’s punished. As much as no person should be allowed to wear a shield and carry a gun who otherwise acts upon his desire to molest children, that’s an employment issue when there was no connection whatsoever between employment as a peace officer and the crime committed.

A higher standard? Absolutely. Fire him. Strip him of his gun and shield. Never, but never, let him serve as a peace officer again, as this is not the sort of person who should enjoy the “privilege” of exercising authority of others. But if that authority had nothing to do with his criminal conduct, then elevating the offense for a wholly irrelevant and unconnected status is just wrong and a denial of equal protection. Yes, even people who work as cops get equal protection.

Now, if only the general assembly was similarly concerned with holding the cop to a higher standard should he murder a 12-year-old in the performance of his duty. But that’s not the issue in this case.