News & Commentary

A leading Kansas civil rights organization says an estimated 30,000 people living in the state should be informed they have the right to vote. The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas launched a campaign to reach out to Kansans with felony records and encourage them to register to vote.

The ACLU of Kansas says that around 30,000 Kansans who have completed their sentences for felony convictions are unaware that they have the right to vote. To that end, a new effort has been launched to inform them of their restored voting rights, recruit volunteers and to get more voters to vote.

The ACLU had argued the “two-step” was used to target drivers coming from or heading to states where marijuana is legal, despite previous court rulings limiting how police can use information about a vehicle’s origin and destination.

Groups that sent the letter, including the Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity (MORE2) and the ACLU of Kansas, asked for a meeting with DOJ officials this month or next to “make the case” for a civil rights investigation into KCK law enforcement.

“When we’re talking about something like autonomy and dignity and privacy those are pretty expansive rights and government intrusion on those rights should have a high level of scrutiny to ensure there is not a deep government invasion into the personal decisions that we have,” said Sharon Brett.

From cash bail, to eliminating juvenile fines and fees to legalized medical marijuana, Kansans want change in our criminal justice system. Kansas voters are increasingly uninspired by legislators’ unwillingness to answer the call for better policy, year after year.

Sharon Brett, legal director of the ACLU of Kansas said Wright’s story is representative of hundreds, if not thousands, of incarcerated people who were sentenced under “highly punitive and draconian” laws that have since changed.

“We’ve definitely had concerns about First Amendment rights,” Tseng said, “in terms of not only political content, but also religious content that prisoners haven’t been able to get. There doesn’t appear to be any real reason for the prisons to censor these materials.”

A federal court in Wichita has granted class-action status to 5,245 people on the Wichita Police Department’s gang list in a suit filed by the ACLU and the Kansas Appleseed Center for Law and Justice in 2021, seeks to strike down a state law and city policy.