TOPEKA Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Lawton Nuss announced Friday hell retire in mid-December after serving on the states highest court since 2002, when Republican Gov. Bill Graves tapped him for the role.
That makes the second retirement announcement from the court in less than a month. Justice Lee Johnson will retire in September. He was appointed by Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius in 2007.
Nuss held the high courts top job since 2010. During those years, he ruled with the majority of his colleagues in a massive school finance case that forced Gov. Sam Brownback and the Legislature to add hundreds of millions of dollars to schools that had taken a hit in the Great Recession.