News & Commentary

Kansas Senate bill  401 would make it easier to prosecute teachers, librarians or school principals for exposing students to offensive materials. The bill was drafted in response to a sexual education poster shown by a teacher in the Shawnee Mission School District.  ACLU Advocacy Director Holly Weatherford, commenting on the current language proposed in the bill, said it is “facially unconstitutional.”“The way this bill is currently written, it is so overly broad that it’s hard to even evaluate what all of the implications or consequences are of its reach,” she said. Read more here: "Kansas Senate weighs bill to ease prosecution of teachers over offensive materials", Wichita Eagle, 03/02/2014 

Remarks at the Equality Kansas rally by ACLU of Kansas executive Director Gary Brunk."The road our nation has traveled in the quest to expand liberties has never been straight or easy.  The Declaration of Independence boldly asserted that all men are created equal, but the Constitution condoned slavery.  As historian Garry Wills convincingly argues, at Gettysburg President Lincoln had to leapfrog back over the Constitution to the Declaration to restore the centrality of the idea “that all men are created equal.”  Even then, it was many decades after Gettysburg before we began making real progress in the struggle for equality for African-Americans, just as it took decades before we made real progress in the struggle for equality for women.   Today we can acknowledge that the fulfillment of rights of Africa-Americans and women has improved, but we still have a long way to go before we are near the end of the road to equality.And so it is for other groups marginalized and discriminated against in our society.  In the last few years our country has taken astonishing steps towards equality for LGBT people.  I am proud to say that the ACLU has played a critical role in that progress, including our historic victory in convincing the Supreme Court  that the Defense of Marriage Act violated equal protection by denying married gay couples recognition under federal law.We have made progress, but much remains to be done. Hardly anywhere is that as true as in our own state, where under the guise of religious liberty some legislators want to legalize discrimination against LGBT couples.But this fight in Kansas is not about religious liberty, it’s about giving persons with certain convictions the right to impose their views on others.  This is, pure and simple, an attempt to institutionalize the tyranny of a set of ideas that increasingly most Americans reject.Today, as civil libertarians, as people who are religious, as people who are not religious but care about working to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence, we are called on

Under the guise of “religious freedom,” Kansas House Bill 2453 would allow discrimination against LGBT people.  The opposition to the bill has been tremendous, coming from not only advocates and citizens who believe in equality, but also from concerned business leaders.  While the legislation seems derailed for the time being, the ACLU will be watching closely for attempts to revive it. 

On December 7, 2012, Missouri Western State University’s Department of Nursing and Allied Health added a new social media policy to its Student Handbook.  That ill-considered policy prohibited students from “post[ing] unfavorable remarks about any academic or clinical institution, faculty, staff or patients” or transmitting “any . . . institution-related image that . . . would cause embarrassment.” The policy also required that “[a]ny images of health professions students in uniform posted on social media sites must reflect a positive image.”  Finally, the policy included broad language prohibiting students from making any controversial statements or using profanity on social media.

On December 18, 2013, the Kansas Board of Regents approved revisions to its policy on “Suspensions, Terminations and Dismissals” of faculty and staff of the seven universities and twenty-six community colleges and technical schools under its authority.  In the revisions announced last week, the Board has imposed vague and overbroad restrictions on the use of social media by faculty and staff.As an editorial published in The Kansas City Star on December 18 observed, “[t]he policy is in response to the uproar created by a University of Kansas professor’s inappropriate tweet and appears to be a ham-handed attempt to mollify conservatives in the state Legislature.”In the aftermath of the Navy Yard shootings in mid-September 2013 in which a lone gunman killed twelve people and injured three others, KU journalism professor David Guth posted a tweet that read “The blood is on the hands of the #NRA. Next time, let it be YOUR sons and daughters. Shame on you. May God damn you.”The Kansas State Senate leadership immediately called for KU to fire professor Guth and threatened to cut the university’s funding if he were not fired.  On September 20, the university placed Guth on extended administrative leave.The Regents’ new social media policy presents a major threat to academic freedom.  Specifically, by couching the policy’s restrictions in vague and overbroad terms, the Regents have created an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty in which faculty and staff will likely suppress their expression of opinions and conclusions on controversial topics in order to avoid incurring the wrath of the administration and the state legislature.  That is an unhealthy prospect for the academy in Kansas.Because of these concerns, on Friday, December 20, 2013, the Legal Director of the ACLU of Kansas signed off on a letter of concern written by the Legal Director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.  The National Coalition Against Censorship also joined the FIRE and the ACLU.  In the letter, we called for the Regents to rescind the ill-advised new social media policy and to issue a strong reaffirmation of the rights of freedom of expression and academic freedom on its campuses.We will continue to monitor this situation, and we would like to hear about any instances in which the administrations of the Regents’ institutions enforce this social media policy.

The Young family lives in a single family home in Osawatomie, Kansas.  On November 5, 2013, Mr. Young discovered two surveillance cameras mounted to the fence in his backyard.  One camera was pointed into the Youngs’ side and backyard, and the other camera was pointed directly at the sliding glass door in the rear of their home.  The backyard is where the Youngs’ children play and where the family gathers for to enjoy their everyday domestic life.  The sliding glass door opens into an area of the home where Ms. Young breastfeeds her baby and where the parents change the baby’s diapers. After discovering the cameras, Mr. Young removed them from his fence.  When he checked the SD cards in the cameras, Mr. Young saw images of Osawatomie police officer Will Bradshaw installing the cameras on the fence in the Youngs’ backyard.  When Mr. Young called the Osawatomie police department to complain about the cameras, detective Dave Stuteville told him that the police had every right to take photographs of anybody’s back yard because a backyard is a “public access” area where there is no right of privacy.

On September 23, 2013, the School Board of the Liberal, Kansas, School District, USD No. 480 adopted a policy that allowed student-led prayer at football games and other school events.   About ten days later, during a special meeting held on October 2, 2013, the Board rescinded its hastily drafted student-led prayer policy and replaced it with a “limited public forum” policy which allows randomly selected volunteer “[s]tudents . . . to deliver a pre-game message.”

Since May 2013, the ACLU Foundation of Kansas (the ACLU) has been collecting and reviewing the policies in place in Kansas’s jails.  Using the Kansas Open Records Act, the ACLU has requested the policies from over fifty jails.The the Allen County Inmate Handbook states that “No one will be allowed to have special food for diets based on religious or other related reasons. You can simply choose not to eat.”Under the jail’s draconian policy, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Rastafarian, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Seventh Day Adventist inmates who adhere to strict dietary beliefs have to choose between starvation and remaining true to their religious creeds.Section 7 of the Kansas Bill of Rights and the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act require jails to accommodate the sincerely held religious beliefs of inmates – including religious beliefs that compel inmates to eat a restricted diet.On Friday, October 4, 2013, the ACLU sent a demand letter to Allen County Counselor Alan Weber bluntly stating that the Allen County Jail’s policy on religious meals is a gross violation the constitutional and statutory rights of inmates whose religious beliefs require them to eat special diets.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Four times as many prospective Kansas voters have their registrations on hold for failing to meet a proof-of-citizenship requirement than for all other reasons combined, state statistics show.Kansans with registrations on hold can't legally cast ballots. A law that took effect in January requires new Kansas voters to produce a birth certificate, passport or other papers documenting their U.S. citizenship, but election officials also put registrations on hold for other reasons, such as when people fill out registration forms improperly or register before turning 18.Kansas had about 21,300 voter registrations on hold this week, and more than 17,100 — 80 percent of the total — were for people who hadn't met the proof-of-citizenship requirement. The secretary of state's office provided the figures to The Associated Press.Most voters whose registrations are on hold filled out their forms at a driver's license office, the secretary of state's office says. Kansas requires anyone obtaining a new license to document that they're living in the U.S. legally, but the Department of Revenue, which oversees licensing, has backed away from requiring anyone renewing a license to do the same.The department's shift and the number of registrations on hold led a key backer of the proof-of-citizenship law, Kansas House Elections Committee Chairman Scott Schwab, to promise to review its administration after the Legislature reconvenes next year."Something's got to change," Schwab, an Olathe Republican, said Wednesday.Kansas has about 1.7 million registered voters. But the number of people with registrations on hold over the proof-of-citizenship rule surpasses the ballots typically cast in a state House race and could swing a tight statewide election.Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Republican, championed the proof-of-citizenship law as a way to prevent noncitizens, particularly those in the U.S. illegally, from voting. He said at least 15 noncitizens were registered to vote at the end of 2012, and Sedgwick County officials recently reported a case of someone on the "suspense" list acknowledging being a noncitizen — and thus, unable to comply with the proof-of-citizenship law."A percentage of those 17,000 who haven't proven their citizenship can't and shouldn't be allowed to register," Kobach said. "The system is working."Federal election laws mandate that states allow people to register to vote at driver's license offices. In Kansas, such registrations account for more than 80 percent of those on hold over the proof-of-citizenship rule."These are mostly casual registrants, many of whom do not intend to vote," Kobach said.Holly Weatherford, program director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas and Western Missouri, called the number "shocking." The ACLU strongly opposed the law's enactment and has threatened to file a federal lawsuit."We have sort of created a problem where a problem didn't exist," she said.Weatherford and other critics of the law contend it suppresses voter turnout, an argument Kobach called "idiotic." He likened the proof-of-citizenship requirement to the state law requiring voter registration and said his office had expected that registrations on hold "would be in the thousands."But Douglas County Clerk Jamie Shew, a Democrat, said county election officials hadn't anticipated the Department of Revenue's policy shift on driver's licenses. Revenue Secretary Nick Jordan said this week that the department was responding to concerns about inconveniencing drivers and to cues from federal officials that less would be required of states under a 2005 anti-terrorism law designed to make driver's licenses secure."None of us truly believed it was going to be a seamless, no-harm implementation, but none of us thought there would be this many (registrations on hold) at this point," Shew said.Link to article