News & Commentary

On behalf of the board of directors, staff, volunteers and membership of the ACLU of Kansas, I’d like to thank the Topeka community for helping us host our recent “Free State Forum” event.

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing a federal prison in Kansas to force it to provide an inmate with buprenorphine, an opioid addiction medication, saying the man would “inevitably suffer and possibly die” without it.

"It really wouldn't be a stretch to call this denial of Mr. Crews' treatment a death sentence," Lauren Bonds, legal director for the ACLU of Kansas, said in a news release. "Every minute we wait is another minute of suffering for him."

A court notice shows the federal lawsuit filed by a Muslim aerospace engineer has been settled days before the trial over allegations of discrimination stemming from a party at a Kansas lake.

Still, the growing use of the devices by police raises questions about citizens’ Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, said Lauren Bonds, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas.

"When the bigger cities start taking this on and indicating that a larger percentage of the population should be protected from discriminaton, that's an indication to the other cities, to the rest of Kansas, that this is something that's a priority for every single municipality," Harmon said.

“There’s no way any attorney who passed their professional responsibility exam,” ACLU of Kansas Legal Director Lauren Bonds said, “would think that what Cindy and Scott were doing constituted the unauthorized practice of law.”

“There was no legitimate basis for believing Hoedel or Yeargain were engaged in the unauthorized practice of law,” said Lauren Bonds, legal director for ACLU of Kansas. “As an attorney, he really should’ve known that Cindy and Scott’s activism didn’t constitute a law practice.”

Following a wave of feedback to an original draft that raised censorship concerns, the Shawnee Mission Board of Education on Monday advanced updated policy language on student publications that integrated input received from students and patrons.