A bill that would make it easier to impeach Kansas Supreme Court justices passed the Kansas Senate 21-19 on Tuesday.
“I think it’s just another attempt to have the Legislature intimidate our Supreme Court,” Sen. David Haley, D-4th Dist., said.
He said the Legislature and governor have had a “monolithic school of thought” about how government should be run.
“So Senate Bill 439 is an attempt to intimidate this current Kansas Supreme Court into trying to think more along the lines of the governor and Legislature,” he said.
School finance is probably the biggest decision the Supreme Court has ruled on that the majority of the Legislature doesn’t agree with, and there have been other issues, such as overturning the marriage amendment.
On the bill, Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, said, according to the Senate Journal, “Alexander Hamilton said ‘Laws are a dead letter without courts to expound and define their true meaning and operation.’ SB 439 blatantly seeks to muzzle our Kansas Supreme Court, thereby compromising its ability to freely interpret and serve as the final arbiter of Kansas laws.”
Sen. Mitch Holmes, R-St. John, stated in the Senate Journal that there were several examples of judicial activism. “When officials are allowed to have absolute power, we run a real risk to our democratic processes. We live in an era when people believe that independence of the courts and absolute power are synonymous,” he stated. “’We the People’ will have no recourse against a branch with absolute power.”
The bill went to the House on Tuesday, where it was introduced.