News & Commentary

“Chairman Proctor regularly attacks Loud Light, the ACLU, and Kansas Appleseed in his campaign-oriented, highly-partisan newsletter,” she said. “Coincidentally, he brings legislation that directly and indirectly retaliates against them for exercising the same rights everybody else does.

The ACLU of Kansas has testified against the bill, arguing it makes it harder to hold federal agents accountable for misconduct and expands immunity without strengthening oversight.

“This discriminatory bill undermines our state’s strong constitutional protections against government overreach and persecution,” said Micah Kubic, executive director of ACLU of Kansas.

“Bathroom bans are grounded in prejudice and misinformation,” said Logan Demond, ACLU of Kansas policy director, in a previous statement. “And they don’t actually make anyone safer.”

Former Kansas Chief Justice Lawton Nuss has criticized the amendment, calling the election of state Supreme Court justices a “really bad idea.” He is joined by numerous state organizations — such as the ACLU, the Kansas Bar Association, and other mostly liberal groups — and I’ve no doubt that they’re sincere (though again, those organizations are probably also motivated in part by a desire to maintain a selection arrangement that has occasionally delivered surprisingly Democrat-friendly decisions).

Originally filed in 2020 by the ACLU of Kansas and the law firm Spencer Fane LLP, the lawsuit argued that troopers routinely relied on drivers’ residency and travel plans to justify prolonged detentions, vehicle searches, and canine sniffs.

Police in Lenexa, Kansas used automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology to pursue a man who wrote a critical op-ed about the police department, according to reporting by Kansas public radio station KCUR. This is a rare public example of exactly the kind of abuse that we’ve long warned against when it comes to mass-surveillance systems like license plate readers. It also comes on the heels of reports about apparent misuse of license plate databases by ICE agents in Minnesota not for legitimate law enforcement purposes but to intimidate observers and protesters, and of a woman who was falsely accused of theft based on data from license plate readers.

DeMond testified that HB 2448 subjects noncitizens to unfair treatment “when they pose absolutely no threat to their community.” He also said the legislation places an increased burden on poll workers who would have to correctly identify various immigration statuses. “(This bill) creates a two-tiered system of identification that treats people differently based on their citizenship status,” he said. "Driver’s licenses exist to confirm one's identity, not their personal background.”

Logan DeMond, director of policy and research at the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, clashed with Sen. Caryn Tyson, R-Parker, over his assertion that signature verification laws discriminate against certain types of voters.