News & Commentary

The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes and Kansas Appleseed joined forces to form Kansas United for Impartial Courts in a campaign to oppose the constitutional amendment. They warned that the amendment would allow out-of-state billionaires to buy the court. “The billionaire political donors and politicians behind this amendment tried to buy our Supreme Court,” said Micah Kubic, executive director of the ACLU of Kansas. “They tried to turn our justices into politicians for sale, all so they could control the court’s rulings and take away our rights. But tonight, Kansas said no.”

According to the ACLU of Kansas, between 80,000 and 100,000 of these devices are now installed across the country. The assumption that "out here" means unobserved is dead.

Kubic, who is also executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, said an election would turn justices into politicians seeking dollars for campaigns. He expressed concern over the influence that campaign money could have in the court system. “Wisconsin is the best example because it is the most recent one of what this new landscape looks like,” he said.

“The only way they can do that is by tapping into local police forces,” said Micah Kubic, the executive director of the ACLU of Kansas.

Micah Kubic, the executive director of the ACLU of Kansas, said he expected the court to soon consider several controversial policies, including on LGBTQ+, labor and voting rights.

For weeks, reports of ICE activity in Olathe seemed to arrive almost daily, with residents documenting detentions at apartment complexes, businesses, gas stations and intersections and community volunteers tracking federal agents across the city. But since the July 11 detention of a U.S. citizen in Olathe, few new public reports have surfaced in the city, according to local ICE watch groups. Here’s what we know:

Micah Kubic, executive director of ACLU of Kansas, worries that influence from billionaire donors would become rampant under a system where judges must campaign for votes from the public. “I would far prefer a Kansas Supreme Court that is fair and impartial, where the things that I believe in lose, as they often have, to one that is bought and paid for by billionaire political donors,” Kubic said.

Micah Kubic, executive director of ACLU of Kansas, said, "This is a blatant attack by the legislators on our justices, and it’s part of a decades-long pattern of politicians attempting to punish the judicial branch for issuing decisions on education and reproductive freedom that they disagree with. ... Partisan elections quickly become fights between out-of-state, big money interests. These elections become less about the voters and constituents of the state and more an opportunity for out-of-state big money interests to wage war against one another. And now, lawmakers would like our state’s highest court to be smack in the middle of that war."

The ACLU of Kansas found the eight closed locations accounted for 19% of all early votes cast in the 2024 general election.