Kansas: “The sleeper referendum that could reshape the national judiciary”
A ballot referendum in Kansas that’s generated little national attention could set off a nationwide arms race to politicize state courts.
Kansans on Tuesday will decide whether to amend the state constitution to allow voters to directly elect justices to the state’s highest court — a push by the legislature’s Republican supermajority to reshape a judicial system that’s repeatedly stymied its policy priorities.
Critics of the measure worry Kansas could become the inspiration for other states to overhaul their own high courts, eroding the independence of the judiciary nationwide.
Some supporters say that’s the point.
“Anyone who observes the U.S. Supreme Court or state supreme courts and pretends that there aren’t political inclinations and political factors going into the judges’ calculations on close cases is deceiving themselves,” GOP Kansas AG Kris Kobach, who backs the amendment, said in an interview with Playbook.
“If politics are inevitably involved in some of these very controversial decisions, then should the selection of justices be done behind closed doors by individuals who are unaccountable,” he said. “Or should ‘we the people’ be able to decide whether one political argument or another one should have weight in selecting a justice?”
Kansas is the first state to attempt a wholesale shift in process from nomination to election — and if it passes, “it could spark a trend nationwide,” Deirdre Schifeling, the chief political and advocacy officer at the ACLU, told Playbook.
Micah Kubic, the executive director of the ACLU of Kansas, said he expected the court to soon consider several controversial policies, including on LGBTQ+, labor and voting rights.
More than $12 million have been funneled into the referendum from both sides, including the ACLU, the Koch brothers-backed Americans for Prosperity and organizations tied to the conservative legal activist and Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo….
