{"id":27686,"date":"2026-08-04T20:12:43","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T15:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=27686"},"modified":"2026-08-04T20:12:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T15:12:43","slug":"the-push-to-elect-kansas-supreme-court-justices-is-a-cynical-anti-abortion-power-grab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=27686","title":{"rendered":"The Push to Elect Kansas Supreme Court Justices Is a Cynical Anti-Abortion Power Grab"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"article-content\">\n<p><em>This article is part of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/cafe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">TPM Cafe,<\/a>\u00a0TPM\u2019s home for opinion and news analysis.<\/em>\u00a0<em>It was originally published at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/ballsandstrikes.org\/court-reform\/kansas-supreme-court-elections-amendment-power-grab\/\" target=\"_blank\">Balls and Strikes<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, voters in Kansas will decide whether to make a dramatic change to the process for filling vacancies on the Kansas Supreme Court. For the last 68 years, under state law, a nine-member bipartisan commission has assembled lists of three potential nominees for the governor to choose from. The commission consists of both lawyers and nonlawyers, and it is far more transparent than most systems in place for selecting high court judges: Its interviews of aspiring justices, for example, are\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thebeaconnews.org\/stories\/2026\/07\/30\/kansas-supreme-court-constitutional-amendment-august-ballot\/\" target=\"_blank\">livestreamed<\/a>\u00a0for the public.<\/p>\n<p>This is a real problem for the state\u2019s Republican culture warriors, who in recent years have become increasingly angry with the court\u2019s decisions on, among other things, abortion access: Back in 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court issued a landmark opinion holding that the state constitution protects residents\u2019 right to access abortion care. In response, the GOP-controlled legislature\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kansascity.com\/news\/politics-government\/article315992782.html\" target=\"_blank\">concocted<\/a>\u00a0the Kansas Elections for Supreme Court Justice Amendment, which is, as the name suggests, a constitutional amendment that would abolish the nominating commission and allow the legislature to institute partisan judicial elections instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Supporters of the amendment say it would return political power to the people: Voters, not \u201cattorneys and political insiders,\u201d they argue, should decide who sits on Kansas\u2019s courts. What the amendment is really about is Republican politicians\u2019 desire to restrict abortion rights, and their frustration with both the Kansas Supreme Court, for refusing to let them do so, and also with Kansas voters, who in 2022 ratified the Kansas Supreme Court\u2019s decision by emphatically rejecting a GOP-backed anti-abortion constitutional amendment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The legislature\u2019s bet is that in a state that President Donald Trump won by 16 points in 2024, transforming state supreme court seats into explicitly partisan prizes\u2014and infusing the judicial selection process with millions of dollars in dark-money spending\u2014will yield a more conservative Kansas Supreme Court that will do what right-wing activists want.<\/p>\n<p>Republican frustration with the Kansas Supreme Court\u2019s insubordination reached its zenith seven years ago, when the court held in\u00a0<em>Hodes &amp; Nauser v. Schmidt\u00a0<\/em>that abortion rights are protected by the Kansas Constitution\u2019s guarantee of \u201cinalienable natural rights.\u201d In its opinion, the court emphasized its power to interpret the Kansas Constitution\u2019s promises \u201cindependently of the manner in which federal courts interpret corresponding provisions of the United States Constitution.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>For reproductive rights advocates in the state, both the holding and its legal basis were huge. Only a year earlier, Justice Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court had created a solid majority of five anti-abortion justices primed to overturn\u00a0<em>Roe v. Wade<\/em>. The result in\u00a0<em>Hodes &amp; Nauser v. Schmidt<\/em>\u00a0meant that even if\u00a0<em>Roe\u00a0<\/em>fell, Kansans\u2019 abortion rights would remain safe from the conservative legal movement.<\/p>\n<p>Almost immediately after the court decided\u00a0<em>Hodes &amp; Nauser<\/em>, Republican lawmakers began pushing to amend the Kansas constitution to explicitly state that it does not protect abortion rights. Eventually, they got a proposal on the ballot in the form of a referendum known as the \u201cValue Them Both\u201d Amendment, which went before voters in August 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Their timing could not have been worse. In June, just two months before Kansans headed to the polls, the U.S. Supreme Court indeed overturned\u00a0<em>Roe<\/em>\u00a0in\u00a0<em>Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization<\/em>. (Kavanaugh indeed joined the five-justice majority.) Support for abortion rights\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2022\/07\/PP_2022.07.06_Roe-v-Wade_REPORT.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">spiked<\/a>\u00a0across the country, including in Kansas, where voters responded to\u00a0<em>Dobbs<\/em>\u00a0by turning out in record numbers to defeat the \u201cValue Them Both\u201d Amendment in an 18-point blowout.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Now, four years after failing to change voters\u2019 minds on abortion rights, Republicans have pivoted to a new strategy: changing the composition of the court that protected those rights in the first place. One group that opposes the current amendment\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.votenokansas.org\/supremecourt\" target=\"_blank\">goes<\/a>\u00a0by \u201cVote No (Again) Kansas\u201d\u2014an attempt to remind voters that they already decided the substantive issue, and to urge them not to be fooled by anti-abortion politics repackaged as judicial selection reform.<\/p>\n<p>Republicans, for their part, have not been shy about their motives. In 2022, then-attorney general candidate Kris Kobach\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/kansasreflector.com\/2026\/07\/13\/four-years-after-value-them-both-kansas-abortion-rights-are-back-on-the-ballot-aug-4\/\" target=\"_blank\">called<\/a>\u00a0judicial elections \u201canother path\u201d to restricting abortion, and predicted that instituting them would allow conservatives to \u201cslowly and quietly\u201d overhaul the Kansas Supreme Court. In November 2025, gubernatorial candidate Ty Masterson told anti-abortion voters that supreme court elections were the \u201csolution\u201d they\u2019d been waiting for, as long as they had the good sense to play it cool in public.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can\u2019t go out there and say it,\u201d Masterson\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/marionrecord.com\/direct\/candidate_links_court_vote_to_abortion+5709vote+43616e646964617465206c696e6b7320636f75727420766f746520746f2061626f7274696f6e\" target=\"_blank\">said<\/a>, according to the\u00a0<em>Marion County Record<\/em>. \u201cBecause they\u2019ll say that if you elect your Supreme Court, you won\u2019t have any right to abortion anymore.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>To give you a sense of the stakes here, spending on the amendment\u2014again, just on the question of whether to hold supreme court elections\u2014has\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/sunflowerstatejournal.com\/judicial-amendment-campaigns-raise-nearly-12-million-a-look-at-whos-giving\/\" target=\"_blank\">topped<\/a>\u00a0$12 million, per the\u00a0<em>Sunflower State Journal<\/em>. Given that spending on the 2025 race for a single Wisconsin Supreme Court seat topped $100 million, $20 million of which came\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/wisconsin-supreme-court-elon-musk-trump-2aae240fc9fd0b1d996b7aa644397fa1\" target=\"_blank\">courtesy<\/a>\u00a0of the reactionary billionaire Elon Musk, it is a safe bet that if the amendment were to pass, the volume of anti-abortion money that would start pouring into Kansas would dwarf that $12 million figure in a hurry.<\/p>\n<p>The amendment\u2019s supporters love extolling the virtues of democratic accountability. But the democratic process has already yielded an unambiguous result: Kansans support their state supreme court\u2019s decision to protect the right to abortion access, and overwhelmingly repudiated politicians\u2019 (initial) hamfisted attempt to take it away. The legislature\u2019s crusade for partisan supreme court elections is reactionary politics in its purest form. Republicans in Kansas do not actually care what voters want. They are upset about a policy choice that voters made, and want to reshape the legal system to shut them out of the process.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\n    window.fbAsyncInit = function() {\n      FB.init({\n        appId: \"101800829865996\",\n        xfbml: true,\n        version: ' v2.6'\n      });\n      window.fbAsyncInit.__didInit = true;\n    };\n    (function(d, s, id) {\n      var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];\n      if (d.getElementById(id)) {\n        return;\n      }\n      js = d.createElement(s);\n      js.id = id;\n      js.src = \"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js\";\n      fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);\n    }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));\n  <\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article is part of\u00a0TPM Cafe,\u00a0TPM\u2019s home for opinion and news analysis.\u00a0It was originally published at\u00a0Balls and Strikes. On Tuesday, voters in Kansas will decide whether to make a dramatic change to the process for filling vacancies on the Kansas Supreme Court. For the last 68 years, under state law, a nine-member bipartisan commission has&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/GettyImages-1242275018-scaled.jpg?w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-political-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}