News & Commentary

The organization filed a motion last week denouncing the “bizarre and illegal sentence” and calling for a state court judge to correct it.

The ACLU of Kansas announced this week that it had named Nadine Farid Johnson, who spent six years as a diplomat in the U.S. Department of State before moving to a role with Google in Los Angeles, as its new executive director.

A group of student journalists packed the front rows of the Shawnee Mission Board of Education meeting Monday as editors of student newspapers in the district expressed their concerns with draft policy language on student press rights that got a first reading last month.

“This is a fairly clear Eighth Amendment violation,” said Lauren Bonds, legal director for the ACLU of Kansas, which brought the Medicaid lawsuit. “Delayed treatment is unconstitutional.”

Last year, the ACLU went into court and sought a writ of mandamus that would force Montgomery County prosecutor Larry Markle to comply with those notification procedures. That case is currently pending.

Grace Altenhofen, a plaintiff in the ACLU First Amendment lawsuit against the school district, told the board she had concerns with the proposed student publications policy update.

“Looking in the court context there are very few court cases where racial bias is alleged where you have a smoking gun of racial bias. A lot of times it’s circumstantial evidence that gets you there,” Bonds said.

A black man who was detained by police while moving into his home said Wednesday that Kansas regulators investigated his racial bias complaint and closed the case with no further action.

The Kansas Commission on Peace Officers’ Standards and Training (CPOST) sent a letter to the man saying the investigation was closed with no further action, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.