As former elected officials with 16 years of experience in the Kansas Legislature and more than 50 years working with parents and children in our public schools — from Belle Plaine to Stafford and from Haviland to Garden City — we want to highlight how Kansas school children and rural communities could be affected by the constitutional amendment on the ballot Aug. 4.
This amendment would establish direct elections of Kansas Supreme Court justices, without any limits on campaign funding, conflicts of interest, or political activity by the justices.
Discussions about changing judicial selection in Kansas started about 15 to 20 years ago because of court decisions requiring the Legislature to adopt constitutional funding for schools.
The debate heated up again recently because the current school finance formula is set to expire next year.
Debate about the court’s makeup did not begin due to some lofty goal of promoting democracy, but because the Kansas Supreme Court is the last bulwark defending our state’s constitutional requirement that all Kansas kids receive an adequate and equitable education, regardless of where they grow up.
Over the years, legislators from both parties resisted overthrowing the state Supreme Court.
Last year, legislative leaders twisted enough arms to put an amendment on the ballot.
Instead of providing voters with a compromise such as adding more members to the vetting panel or Senate confirmation, Legislative leaders took the most extreme path — direct judicial elections with no limits other than what will be “provided by law” in the future, when the public no longer has a say.
The amendment explainer doesn’t mention it, but if you look closely, near the end of the struck-out language, the proposed amendment specifically removes prohibitions that prevented judges from wielding their position and influence to engage in political campaigns and partisan activities.
Kansas public school children could suffer if the next time a school finance case is decided, justices are more concerned about soliciting $1 million campaign checks from out-of-state special interests than protecting every kid’s right to an education.
When both of us were in the Legislature, the Supreme Court forced legislators from across the state and political spectrum to work together to achieve a school funding formula that provided every student a suitably funded education regardless of their ZIP code.
This was not an easy task. Legislators first had to fix our state’s budget after the disastrous tax experiment, which left schools reeling and considering major reductions in services. That could have meant cuts to school transportation funding and cuts to schools with lower enrollment, both of which would have devastated rural communities.
The current, merit-based selection method preserves the fairly good chance that lawyers who grow up and have experience working in rural communities are selected for Supreme Court seats.
Right now, the primary qualifications for Supreme Court justices are lawyers’ reputation, their legal career and their judicial service record. Under these conditions, a lawyer with a rural Kansas background can compete with anybody.
And they have.
Since Kansas adopted merit-based selection in 1958, more than 30% of justices appointed under this system have had roots in Kansas towns with a population of less than 10,000 people, and more than 60% of justices have had roots in communities with a population of fewer than 50,000 people.
