Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector
When 8th-grader Izzy Dieker told her friend, “I’m a lesbian,” a bus driver stopped the bus and confronted the 14-year-old about her use of “inappropriate” language, and the girl was suspended from school.
Mackenzie Clark / The Lawrence Times
Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez announced Tuesday that she would not prosecute violations of a newly effective law in the state of Kansas that makes it a felony for individuals to engage in conduct that would make a person think they are an elections worker.
Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector
An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas says the state’s open records law might as well not exist if Secretary of State Scott Schwab is allowed to keep public information hidden by reconfiguring software.
“Jury nullification is a basic refusal to convict based on the jurors’ beliefs and principles,” Kirsten Kuhn writes in this column.
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt is asking the Kansas Supreme Court to reconsider its decision that a law prohibiting an abortion procedure violates the state constitution.
Mackenzie Clark / The Lawrence Times
Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez has signed on to a statement that decries efforts across the country to criminalize transgender people and gender-affirming healthcare, her office announced Tuesday.
A group of nonprofits are suspending voter registration drives for fear of criminal prosecution under a new state law.
As Douglas County’s annual budget hearings began Monday, commissioners heard a funding request from a new nonprofit criminal defense office. Sam Allison-Natale, chair of Kansas Holistic Defenders, took questions about how the organization aims to improve outcomes and handling of misdemeanor cases in Douglas County.
The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that it will not hear a case of a transgender student in Virginia who was barred from using the boys’ bathroom, a decision that affirms lower-court rulings that said treating transgender students differently violates federal law.
A pair of nonprofit organizations working to encourage voting by mail Wednesday filed a lawsuit to block enforcement of a new Kansas law banning out-of-state entities from sending advance mail ballot applications to voters in the state.
