By John Hanna, Associated Press
TOPEKA, Kan. — Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly on Monday named a veteran trial-court judge opposed by the state's most influential anti-abortion group to the Kansas Supreme Court, an appointment that's likely to intensify a backlash against the court from conservative legislators.
Kelly's selection of Shawnee County District Judge Evelyn Wilson comes with many Republican lawmakers already seeking to change the process for picking Supreme Court justices to give the GOP-controlled Legislature power it does not have now to block an appointee. Abortion opponents also are pushing for a change in the state constitution to overturn a ruling from the high court in April protecting abortion rights.
Kelly passed over two veteran lawyers who work in Republican state Attorney General Derek Schmidt's office. Kansans for Life, an anti-abortion group long influential in GOP politics, opposed Wilson's appointment because of her husband's past political contributions to Kelly and other abortion-rights candidates.
Wilson will replace former Justice Lee Johnson, who retired in September and was a member of the 6-1 majority in the abortion-rights ruling declaring that access to abortion is a “fundamental” right under the Kansas Constitution. Her appointment is not subject to legislative oversight, but she will face voters in November 2022 for a yes-or-no vote on whether she remains on the court for another six years.
She has been a judge since 2004, appointed to the trial-court bench in the county that includes the state capital, Topeka, by then-Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. Wilson has been the county's chief administrative judge since 2014 and before going on the bench was a lawyer in private practice in Topeka and Oberlin, a small, northwest Kansas town near the Nebraska border.
“She brings something quintessentially Kansas to our court,” said Kelly, who noted that Wilson grew up in western Kansas.
Past political contributions by her husband, Michael, have included $3,000 to Kelly's campaign for governor in 2018 and another $3,000 to Kelly campaigns for the state Senate in 2016 and 2012, online campaign finance records show. But he has also given to Republicans and was elected as a GOP precinct committee member last year. He has said his wife avoids politics.
The other two finalists were Deputy Kansas Attorney General Dennis Depew, formerly a lawyer in southeast Kansas for three decades and Kansas Bar Association president, and state Assistant Solicitor General Steven Obermeier, who worked as a prosecutor for three decades in Johnson County, the state's most populous county.
It is Kelly's first appointment to the seven-member high court, and it came a day before the retirement of Chief Justice Lawton Nuss. While Nuss' departure elevates the next senior justice, Marla Luckert, to the top position in the state's court system, it creates another vacancy for Kelly to fill by mid-March. Kelly will have more appointments in a little more than a year in office than her two Republican predecessors did in eight years.
Depew, Obermeier and Wilson also were among 17 judges and attorneys who applied for Nuss' seat on the court. The same lawyer-led nomination commission that picked them as finalists to replace Johnson plans to interview the candidates for Nuss' seat Jan. 16-17 and name three finalists.
Conservative Republican legislators plan to push next year for an amendment to the state constitution to eliminate the commission and have justices named by the governor subject to Senate confirmation. While Kansas has had five Democratic governors in the past 50 years, Republicans have had a Senate majority for more than century.
Conservatives have long argued that the current system, in use since 1960, results in a court that's more liberal than the electorate and makes the justices less accountable to voters. Supporters of the system contend it preserves judicial independence.
The Legislature reconvenes Jan. 13 for its annual session, and conservatives also plan to push for another constitutional change on abortion. Kansans for Life wants an amendment declaring that the Legislature retains the authority to regulate abortion as it sees fit, but at least a few abortion opponents would prefer an amendment banning abortion outright.