<![CDATA[Dawn Rohrer]]>https://theheartlanddissent.substack.comhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xjzG!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5bcecfbb-b819-4510-9dc3-501b448f98c3_1254x1254.pngDawn Rohrerhttps://theheartlanddissent.substack.comSubstackMon, 27 Jul 2026 14:18:17 GMT<![CDATA[The Egregious Attack on the Integrity of the Kansas Supreme Court]]>https://theheartlanddissent.substack.com/p/the-egregious-attack-on-the-integrityhttps://theheartlanddissent.substack.com/p/the-egregious-attack-on-the-integrityThu, 16 Jul 2026 19:11:04 GMT

Last night I had the opportunity to hear retired Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Lawton Nuss speak at a public forum in Salina. Justice Nuss was appointed to the Kansas Supreme Court by Republican Governor Bill Graves through the very merit selection process Kansans will soon vote on changing.

I didn’t go because I wanted someone to tell me how to vote. I went because I wanted to hear from someone who had actually lived the process.

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What I heard wasn’t a political speech.

It was a history lesson.

Justice Nuss explained why Kansas adopted its merit based system nearly 70 years ago and why so many judges, attorneys, and legal scholars believe it has protected the independence of our courts.

That conversation is exactly why this graphic caught my attention.

It makes for a compelling campaign ad, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. When we’re talking about amending the Kansas Constitution, we owe it to ourselves to look at all the facts, not just the ones that fit a political message.

Kansas didn’t adopt merit selection by accident.

We adopted it because of what became known as the Triple Play.

In 1956, Governor Fred Hall lost reelection. Before leaving office, he resigned. Lieutenant Governor John McCuish became governor and immediately appointed Hall to the Kansas Supreme Court after Chief Justice Bill Smith resigned. Three elected officials essentially traded offices within days. Kansans were outraged by what they saw as political maneuvering. In response, they overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment in 1958 creating the merit selection system we still use today.

The goal was to restore public confidence in our courts by reducing political influence over who became a justice.

One thing I’ve heard repeatedly is, “We don’t even get to vote.”

That simply isn’t true.

When a vacancy occurs, the Kansas Supreme Court Nominating Commission reviews every applicant and forwards three finalists to the governor. The governor appoints one of those three. After serving, every justice must stand before Kansas voters in a retention election. We absolutely vote. The difference is that we’re voting on a justice’s record, not on campaign commercials or who raised the most money.

And speaking of money...

I keep hearing that electing judges is somehow “more democratic.”

But what we’ve seen in states with contested judicial elections tells a very different story.

Wisconsin’s 2025 Supreme Court election topped $100 million in spending, making it the most expensive judicial election in American history. Billionaires, political parties, PACs, and outside organizations poured money into that race because they understood how much influence a state supreme court has over the future of a state.

That isn’t the direction I want Kansas to go.

Now let’s talk about the misleading information the opposition shared in the following graphic:

It says the Kansas Supreme Court overturned the Carr brothers’ death sentences and Sidney Gleason’s death sentence.

That’s true as far as it goes.

The problem is that it leaves out what happened next.

In Kansas v. Carr, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Kansas Supreme Court in 2016 and reinstated the death sentences. When the case returned to Kansas, the Kansas Supreme Court affirmed those death sentences in 2022. The Carr brothers remain on death row.

The same thing happened in Kansas v. Gleason. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Kansas Supreme Court in 2016. On remand, the Kansas Supreme Court affirmed Gleason’s death sentence. He also remains on death row.

That’s the ending this graphic never tells.

It leaves readers with the impression that the Kansas Supreme Court somehow let these men avoid the death penalty.

They didn’t.

All three remain on death row today.

There’s another important piece of context that’s missing.

Since Kansans adopted merit selection in 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court has reviewed only a relatively small number of Kansas Supreme Court decisions. Depending on how consolidated cases are counted, it’s approximately 15 cases, with roughly five reversals, or about 33 percent.

That statistic sounds dramatic until you understand how the U.S. Supreme Court works.

The Court accepts only about 1 percent of the thousands of cases it is asked to hear each year. It intentionally chooses cases involving significant constitutional questions or disagreements among courts. Reversals are expected because those are exactly the kinds of issues the Court exists to resolve.

More importantly, Kansas is not an outlier.

When compared with other conservative states like Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Arizona, Alabama, and Georgia, Kansas falls right in the middle. States that elect their judges have experienced comparable or even higher reversal rates after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear their cases.

There is simply no evidence that Kansas’ merit selection system has produced a Supreme Court that is routinely “getting it wrong.”

For me, this vote isn’t really about one death penalty case.

It’s about whether we preserve a judicial system that was intentionally designed to keep campaign politics at arm’s length or replace it with one that’s more vulnerable to political pressure and campaign money.

I believe the risk is high.

Why?

Because changing who gets on the Kansas Supreme Court can change how the Kansas Constitution is interpreted for decades to come.

Legislators pass laws.

Courts decide whether those laws comply with the Constitution.

When lawmakers disagree with how the Constitution has been interpreted, changing who sits on the court becomes one way to pursue a different outcome.

We’ve already seen that play out.

The Kansas Supreme Court has issued landmark decisions protecting adequate public school funding under our Constitution. It also recognized a constitutional right to bodily autonomy under the Kansas Bill of Rights. In 2022, nearly 59 percent of Kansas voters rejected the Value Them Both Amendment, leaving that constitutional interpretation in place.

Many of the same legislative leaders now pushing to change how Kansas Supreme Court justices are selected have also been outspoken critics of those decisions.

Do I know with certainty that changing the selection process would lead to different rulings?

No.

No one can honestly promise that.

But I do believe the risk is significant enough that I’m not willing to gamble with an independent judiciary or with constitutional protections that Kansans have already weighed in on at the ballot box.

That’s why I’ll be voting NO.

Not because I think our current system is perfect.

No system is.

But I believe it does a better job of protecting the independence of our courts while still giving Kansans the final say through retention elections.

Changing our Constitution deserves more than cherry-picked campaign graphics designed to appeal to single-issue voters.

It deserves an honest conversation about what’s really at stake.

Sources

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