BY: SHERMAN SMITH
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — Kansas Republicans returned from last year’s Republican National Convention dismayed by the party’s decision to soften its stance on abortion.
The RNC platform would only go so far as to oppose late-term abortion.
Part of the problem, as Kansas House Majority Leader Chris Croft explained in a private video meeting with Republicans on July 26, was the ripple effect of Kansas voters overwhelmingly supporting abortion rights in the August 2022 election. Kansas Reflector obtained a recording from the meeting.
“Everybody was talking about how Kansas lost Value Them Both, and it affected the rest of the country,” Croft said during his weekly call with select Johnson County Republicans and invited guests.
For Croft, the issue underscored the need for Republicans to preserve their supermajorities in the Kansas House and Senate, which would allow them to overhaul the way Kansas Supreme Court justices are selected. He promised to “work on it” in the 2025 legislative session, but there was a catch.
“Remember, the problem last time was we could not agree amongst ourselves what the heck we wanted,” Croft said. “Do we want to use the federal selection process, or do we want to use election? And we got to get this thing figured out and move forward until we get it done.”
Kansas voters overwhelmingly supported anti-abortion candidates in November, expanding the GOP supermajorities in both chambers at the Statehouse and setting the stage for an overhaul of the judicial selection process.
On Thursday, the Kansas Senate adopted a resolution that calls for the election of justices to the Kansas Supreme Court by popular vote. The House now has a choice: Accept the Senate’s resolution, pass an alternative, or table the issue for another year.
The stakes, as Croft made clear last July, include abortion rights. Opponents also fear that elected justices could overturn rulings that require adequate and equitable funding of public schools.
Senate Republican leadership took a victory lap Thursday after Senate Concurrent Resolution 1611 passed by a 27-13 vote, with four Republicans joining Democrats in dissent. The resolution, which required 27 votes in the Senate and would require 84 votes in the House, would place a constitutional amendment on the ballot in August 2026 that asks voters to replace the decades-old merit-based selection of justices with direct elections.
Under the current system, the Supreme Court Nominating Commission reviews applications for a vacancy and sends three finalists to the governor, who makes the appointment from those three finalists. The commission consists of five attorneys who are elected by attorneys, and four members appointed by the governor. Justices already are subjected to retention votes after they are appointed and again every six years.
“Rather than a system that consolidates authority in the hands of an elite society of super voters, it’s time to restore the power to all Kansans,” said Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican.
Before the vote, 17 organizations issued a joint statement opposing the resolution and supporting the current method for selecting justices. The organizations include the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes, Kansas National Education Association, Kansas AFL-CIO, and the Disability Rights Center of Kansas.
The statement warned of the likelihood, based on elections in other states, that dark money would dominate the judiciary.
“SCR 1611 shifts too much power over the selection of Kansas Supreme Court justices to special interests outside the state of Kansas who do not care about the rule of law in our state,” the statement read.
After the Senate vote, Rep. Rui Xu, a Westwood Democrat, wrote on X: “Republicans are mad that our Supreme Court wanted us to fully fund school and not ban abortions so now they want to change the Supreme Court.”
House Republican leadership has not publicly indicated whether it will take up the Senate’s resolution or produce its own. One alternative would be to require Senate confirmation of the governor’s appointments.
When Croft, an Overland Park Republican, brought the issue up in July, he lamented that “nobody in the Legislature gets a vote” on those appointments.
“That’s gotta be fixed,” he said.