News & Commentary

The ACLU has filed a legal challenge against SB 244 and Kobach’s anti-trans crackdown. In the meantime, Boatman and countless others live in constant limbo. The state’s clumsy rollout of its anti-trans policies means trans Kansans have had their documents revoked seemingly at random; Boatman, for example, still has her license, but lives on edge in anticipation of the day that may suddenly not be the case. She must nonetheless continue to work for and govern a state where she cannot use the women’s restroom in her own place of work.

Federal Department of Justice observers will monitor polling places in Johnson County on Tuesday, Election Day, as part of a historic expansion of its monitoring efforts that includes three of the most populous areas of Kansas. The department announced monitors will be in Wyandotte and Sedgwick counties as well as Johnson County.

Micah Kubic, executive director of ACLU of Kansas, said “the facts are clear: masked, unidentified men are recklessly storming our streets, surrounding cars, separating parents from children, then disappearing them into ICE’s creeping network of deplorable jails and prisons.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas highlighted Brownback’s gubernatorial history after his appointment in 2018. ACLU of Kansas Executive Director Micah Kubic said at the time in a written statement that Brownback interpreted religious freedom as a license to discriminate, “especially against LGBT Kansans.”

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Kansas have challenged SB 244 in Douglas County District Court, arguing that the law violates constitutional protections. A hearing on a request for a preliminary injunction was scheduled to begin Sept. 29. The latest publicly available case information reviewed for this story did not establish the outcome of that hearing.

“Rather than strengthening democracy, [the amendments are] a political maneuver designed to justify future rollbacks of voting rights,” said Rashane Hamby with the ACLU of Kansas in testimony last year.

Opponents, like the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, say it’s already law that only citizens can vote, and passing this amendment could open the floodgates to problematic voting restrictions. Rashane Hamby, director of policy and research for the ACLU of Kansas, said “the language in (the amendment) could be weaponized to justify a return to restrictive voter registration laws, as it explicitly conditions voter eligibility on U.S. citizenship, despite no evidence of noncitizen voting.” Amii Castle, a law professor at the University of Kansas, worries it could open the gates for legislators to try the law that required registering voters to prove their citizenship again. That law was struck down by a federal judge.

The ACLU of Kansas opposed the proposal. Logan Demond, the organization’s director of policy and research, said the act duplicated existing law and raised civil-liberties, enforcement and due-process concerns, KCUR reported. The ACLU also pointed to legal challenges involving similar laws in Indiana, Louisiana and Arizona.

Logan DeMond, director of policy and research for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, in an Oct. 19 letter to the city council, opposed passage of the Halo Act into Prairie Village City Code. In that letter, which is effectively identical to opposition letters DeMond wrote to the cities of Overland Park and Olathe, the ACLU of Kansas identifies challenges to laws similar to Kansas’ Halo Act in Indiana, Louisiana and Arizona. “Prairie Village should not expand enforcement authority by adopting an unnecessary, duplicative and arbitrary law that raises significant concerns regarding civil liberties, enforcement, and due process, and exposes the city to unnecessary legal risk,” DeMond said in the Oct. 19 letter. The duplication DeMond mentioned in the letter refers to how the Halo Act is a state law that is being folded into the UPOC for adoption on a city-by-city basis.