Kansas Republicans have put a constitutional amendment on Tuesday's ballot that would replace the governor's power to appoint state Supreme Court justices with direct popular elections, a move conservatives say restores democratic accountability and opponents call a partisan effort to overturn court rulings on abortion, school funding, and election law.
The measure caps years of Republican frustration with a seven-member court that has blocked abortion restrictions, forced billions in additional education spending, struck down a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, and, just this month, reinstated a three-day grace period for mail ballots that GOP lawmakers had eliminated. Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, who helped write the 2025 ballot proposal and is now seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination, called that mail-ballot ruling "outrageous" and labeled the district court judge who issued it "radical."
If voters approve the amendment, Kansas would become the first state since Mississippi in 1914 to move from appointed to elected justices, reversing a shift Kansas itself made in 1958 when voters scrapped nearly a century of judicial elections in favor of the current appointment system.
The ballot measure did not materialize overnight. Its roots trace to 2019, when the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the state's bill of rights guarantees bodily autonomy and access to abortion. Three years later, Kansas voters affirmed that ruling in a statewide referendum that stunned Republicans.
Seven weeks after that 2022 vote, Attorney General Kris Kobach, then a candidate for the office, told a Republican club in Wichita that electing justices would "slowly and quietly" put anti-abortion justices on the high court, AP News reported. Supporters now say they hope to seat at least four conservative, anti-abortion justices on the seven-member bench by 2033.
Troy Newman, president of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, framed the stakes in an editorial on the organization's website:
"Kansans can bring an end to this reign of abortion by voting 'yes.'"
Kansans for Life, the state's most influential anti-abortion organization, spent at least $87,000 on mailers and texts over the eleven days before the vote. Americans for Prosperity, the low-tax, small-government group, poured in $935,000. Elizabeth Patton, the group's Kansas state director, offered a broader rationale for the change.
"Globally and over history, even in its imperfection, the best system is democracy."
Under the current system, a nominating commission controlled by attorneys selects three finalists, and the governor picks one. Justices then face yes-or-no retention votes every six years, but no sitting justice has ever been removed that way. Term-limited Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly has appointed four of the current seven justices, and the Washington Examiner noted that after Kelly's next appointment, six of the seven seats will have been filled by Democratic governors.
State Sen. Mike Thompson, a conservative Kansas City-area Republican who backs the amendment, put the frustration plainly:
"We don't have a good way to fight back."
The frustration extends beyond abortion. Supreme Court rulings dating to 2004 forced lawmakers to increase education funding to comply with the state constitution, spending decisions that Masterson suggested elected justices would not impose. Speaking to the Marion County Patriots for Liberty, a conservative group, Masterson said, as the Marion County Record reported: "If we elect our Supreme Court, they won't force you to spend money on schools."
Judicial accountability matters in other areas of law, too. Federal courts have increasingly shaped election rules across the country, as seen when the Supreme Court sided with states on counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day.
The Kansas district court judge who reinstated the mail-ballot grace period also blocked enforcement of a 2025 law banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors. That same judge was described as a finalist to fill the most recent Supreme Court vacancy. In 2023, a Kelly-appointed district court judge blocked enforcement of longstanding abortion restrictions, another decision that deepened Republican distrust of the appointment pipeline.
Justice Dan Biles offered another example of the accountability gap opponents of the current system point to. Biles recused himself from a major election law case in 2021 with no explanation, then abruptly reversed that recusal in 2024, again without explanation, before issuing a dissent opposing signature verification for mail-in ballots. Then-Solicitor General Anthony Powell called the move "improper" and said it had "the potential to compromise the public's confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the Court."
Total spending on the ballot measure has exceeded $12 million, a figure that reflects how much both sides believe is at stake. The vote-yes campaign has spent $3.7 million, with its largest single donor being an unnamed Nashville-based nonprofit that supports Republican candidates, groups, and causes. That nonprofit alone contributed $1.7 million, Newsmax reported.
The vote-no campaign has outspent supporters by more than two to one, with $8 million-plus in total spending. Planned Parenthood's national and state affiliates contributed $1.6 million of that total. The abortion provider's heavy investment signals that the left views the current appointment system as essential to preserving the court rulings it favors.
Opponents warn that elections would invite the kind of spending that has consumed judicial races elsewhere. A single Wisconsin Supreme Court contest last year topped $100 million. But supporters counter that the current system already concentrates power in the hands of a nominating commission dominated by attorneys and whichever governor happens to hold office, a process that has produced a bench far to the left of the state's Republican-majority electorate.
Broader fights over mail-in voting rules at the federal level have only intensified Republican interest in controlling who sits on state benches that decide those same questions locally.
Gov. Kelly has positioned herself as the amendment's most prominent opponent. She framed the legislature's push as reckless:
"To think you can make the judicial branch a part of that dysfunctional system is frightening."
Jamie Swan, an engineer and college teaching assistant who knocked on doors for abortion rights in 2022 and is doing the same to oppose the amendment, dismissed the measure in blunter terms:
"I really believe that this is just a power grab."
But the "power grab" accusation cuts both ways. Kelly herself appointed four of the court's seven justices. The nominating commission that feeds her those finalists is controlled by attorneys, not elected officials, not voters. And the retention-vote system that is supposed to provide accountability has never once removed a sitting justice. If that arrangement is not a power grab, it is at minimum a power lock.
Twenty-two states already elect their highest court's judges, eight of them in partisan races. Twenty-six states use gubernatorial appointments. South Carolina and Virginia let legislators pick justices. Kansas elected its own justices for nearly a century before switching to appointments in 1958. The question Tuesday is whether to switch back.
Courts across the country have become central battlegrounds on issues from birthright citizenship to criminal justice, making who sits on the bench a first-order political question whether anyone likes it or not.
Since 1914, eighteen states have moved in the opposite direction, away from elections and toward appointments. Kansas would be swimming against that current. But Kansas Republicans argue the current runs in the wrong direction, carrying the state's judiciary further from the voters it is supposed to serve.
High-profile state court rulings have also shaped policy on issues like the death penalty and criminal sentencing, giving voters a tangible stake in who occupies the bench.
When a court can guarantee abortion access, dictate school budgets, override election laws, and block duly enacted legislation, all without a single member ever facing a competitive election, calling the system "independent" starts to sound like calling it untouchable. Kansas voters now get to decide whether that is a feature or a flaw.