COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Ohio educators submitted a petition to the state on Monday, the first step in a grassroots effort to overturn Senate Bill 1.

The movement began at Youngstown State University, where faculty union members started collecting signatures to initiate a repeal. S.B. 1 will ban diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at public universities, and limit faculty union powers. The sweeping higher education bill was signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine on March 28, and Ohio professors hope to repeal it before it takes effect June 26.

They are trying to repeal the bill using a referendum, which enables voters to decide on a law themselves. In Ohio, laws can be challenged in the 90 days before they take effect through a series of petitions. The faculty group submitted its initial summary petition to secretary of state and attorney general offices on Monday, kicking off the process.

Already, support for the referendum has been high. Although they only needed 1,000 signatures to submit the first petition, the Ohio S.B. 1 Petition group collected between 4,000 and 5,000 signatures in just 10 days.

Yost has until May 5 to decide if he believes the title and summary of Senate Bill 1 organizers submitted with the initial petition are fair and accurate. If he certifies the petition, the group then needs to collect more than 250,000 signatures from registered voters across Ohio. For accurate representation, the law requires signatures that equal 3% of how many voters participated in the last gubernatorial election from at least 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties.

The organization said it anticipates Yost rejecting the first petition, so it hurried to submit it on Monday to allow time to collect enough signatures for another if need be. The group has until June 25 to certify their process and gather the hundreds of thousands of signatures they need.

The group is organizing across the state, attracting a number of supportive volunteers. When S.B. 1 was under consideration at the Statehouse, it received around 1,800 opponent testimonies but just 39 proponents. The faculty group pointed to the overwhelming opposition in support of their movement.

If they are able to submit the proper petitions, S.B. 1 would be paused from being enacted until voters have the chance to decide in November.