Elisabeth Frost, representing League of Women Voters, gives a rebuttal to a question in her Kansas Supreme Court argument during the hearing of League of Women Voters, et al v. Schwab in 2023. (Pool photo by Evert Nelson/Topeka Capital-Journal)
One hundred and sixty-five years ago come Friday, the Kansas Constitution was adopted by voters. The document had been framed the sweltering summer before in an unfinished brick building between the Kaw and Missouri Rivers in recently organized Wyandotte County.
The document is still being debated today.
Some opinions, of course, are more important than others.
In 2022, for example, Kansas voters were asked — just six weeks after Roe v. Wade was overturned — to decide on an amendment to declare abortion unprotected by the state constitution. Kansans overwhelming voted to keep the right to abortion.
The Kansas referendum came after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the decades-long precedent of Roe, effectively sending the issue back to the states to decide. Since then, 14 states have adopted abortion bans. But reproductive rights isn’t the only issue on which the high court has created a legal vacuum for states to fill. In 2013, it gutted provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and many states created new laws making it harder to vote .