News & Commentary

In a little more than a week, a challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to the death penalty in Kansas will go before a Sedgwick County judge. Attorneys for the ACLU are making the case that the use of the death penalty is discriminatory and doesn’t serve its punitive purpose.

Kansas ACLU policy director Aileen Berquist said runoff elections discouraged voter engagement and were based on discriminatory practices that began in the Jim Crow era to disenfranchise Black voters.

The past two years have been the deadliest for transgender people in recent history, in large part due to the rapidly increasing number of legislative attacks against trans peoples’ rights and the resurgence of demeaning and harmful anti-trans rhetoric in our communities. Kansas is no exception.

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“This is an extremely harmful and antagonistic bill that would ban medically necessary, safe, and evidence-based medical care, and lead to negative mental and physical health outcomes for both cisgender and transgender Kansans,” said ACLU legal fellow D.C. Hiegert.

“We would hope that legislators listen to what voters had to say with their overwhelming vote on the August ballot initiative,” said Aileen Berquist, policy director at the ACLU of Kansas.

The ACLU says that when the Kansas Supreme Court in 2019 found that the state constitution protects abortion, a decision called Hodes, the justices set a “strict scrutiny” standard for laws that infringe on fundamental rights.

Organization wants to eliminate fees for children and legalize medical marijuana

Nickolaus Hernandez, city manager in Dodge City, said in a statement that the lawsuit does not give a complete picture of the city’s method of at-large commission elections and municipal activities “as it relates to several other cities of the same size and structure across Kansas.”