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Thursday, November 04, 2010

Courts - Ruling on "Lawsuit seeks to change how Kansas Supreme Court judges are appointed"

Updating this Sept. 15, 2010 ILB entry, which related that "A federal judge has denied a request to stop the way Kansas Supreme Court justices are selected" (a preliminary injunction),and this Aug. 29th entry where the ILB compared the Kansas and Indiana selection systems, Roxana Hegeman of the Kansas City Star reports today in a story that begins:

WICHITA, Kan. | A federal judge on Wednesday tossed out a constitutional challenge to the way Kansas nominates its appellate justices, ruling that it’s not his job to weigh in on the debate over whether participants in the process should be popularly elected.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Monti Belot comes just two days after the governor filled a vacancy on the Kansas Supreme Court. It also comes a day after voters retained, by margins of 60 percent or better, all four Supreme Court justices who were on the ballot — a fact Belot noted in making his ruling.

The judicial nomination dispute is expected to resurface in the Legislature, where anti-abortion forces are coalescing in a move to change the state Constitution which set out the process.

Later in the story:
At issue is a process created more than a half-century ago that uses a nine-person nominating commission to fill vacancies on the Kansas Supreme Court and appellate courts. Lawyers elect five of those nine commission members.

The lawsuit in Kansas was filed by Indiana-based attorney James Bopp Jr., who last year represented three Alaska voters who challenged a similar selection process in that state. A federal judge dismissed the Alaska lawsuit in a decision that has been appealed.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 4, 2010 08:48 AM
Posted to Courts in general