At the start of the 2022 Kansas Legislative Session, state legislative leaders promised to pursue some of the nation’s most extreme anti-democracy measures.
That was one promise they kept.
The 2022 legislative session saw the most grievous attacks on democracy and our constitutional rights in living memory. Indeed, the full range of civil liberties and civil rights that are essential to the practice and idea of democracy came under wholesale assault.
The voice and power of the civil liberties movement made a difference. Squared up against enormously powerful forces, the ACLU of Kansas and its allies defending democracy succeeded more often than not. Although a few anti-civil liberties measures did become law this year, democracy in Kansas emerged from the 2022 state legislative session unbroken and unbowed.