Category: Johnson County

Shawnee Mission hospital official forced to consider morgue capacity amid escalating COVID-19 surge

by Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — At AdventHealth in Shawnee Mission, the number of patients being treated for COVID-19 has doubled in the past week to 82.

Another 25 people are waiting in the emergency room for a bed to become available, some for 48 hours.

Lisa Hays, the chief medical officer there, says the hospital nearly ran out of ventilators before new ones arrived this week, and the federal supply of antibody treatments used for COVID-19 patients can’t keep up with their needs.

“The other issue, a new thing for me, is morgue capacity,” Hays said. “Had to learn how many bodies our morgue could hold yesterday and determine whether that was going to be adequate for what our needs are.”

Hays joined other hospital leaders in a news briefing Wednesday hosted by the University of Kansas Health System. Pressure on medical care providers continues to build as the state sets new records for COVID-19 infections.

Hays said her staff is “on the brink.”

“Every day, when I round in the intensive care unit and check on the staff, people are in tears,” Hays said. “They’re struggling to get the community to understand how dire the situation is in the hospital and the workload that they’re taking on.”

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment reported 27 new deaths, 22,240 new cases and 139 hospitalizations since Monday.

The number of new cases surpassed the previous two-day record of 16,341, set earlier this month. The average number of new cases for each of the past seven days is 7,448. Before the start of the month, the seven-day average had never topped 2,800 cases per day.

Catherine Satterwhite, a regional administrator for Health and Human Services, said ICU admissions typically trail infections by 14 days, and deaths trail by 21 days.

“In my head, I’m thinking it’s going to be a rough couple of weeks,” Satterwhite said.

The omicron variant has had a different effect on different parts of the country, and the Midwest is still seeing a sharp trajectory, Satterwhite said. Based on data from elsewhere in the world, health officials expect to see a sharp decline in new cases — but they don’t know when.

The number of unvaccinated will determine how long omicron hangs around, she said. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows 57.6% of Kansans are fully vaccinated, including 68.8% of adults. Those numbers trail the national averages by about 5 percentage points.

At KU Health, only 18 of the 123 patients who are being actively treated for COVID-19 are fully vaccinated.

Satterwhite said federal officials have ventilators available for Kansas hospitals, but there aren’t enough monoclonal antibodies to meet hospital needs. The federal government is deploying all of the antibodies in the stockpile and not holding any back, Satterwhite said.

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2022/01/12/shawnee-mission-hospital-official-forced-to-consider-morgue-capacity-amid-escalating-covid-19-surge/.

Kansas Supreme Court reverses Johnson County judge’s ruling that pandemic law is unconstitutional

The Supreme Court cited a doctrine known as ‘constitutional avoidance,’ which counsels against ruling on the constitutionality of a law if there are other grounds to resolve a case.

by Dan Margolies, KCUR and Kansas News Service

The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday overturned a Johnson County judge’s decision that a 2021 Kansas law enacted to address COVID-19 emergency measures is unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court, though, made clear it was not expressing an opinion on the constitutionality of the law, Senate Bill 40. Instead, it said Johnson County District Judge David Hauber had overstepped his bounds by ruling on the law’s constitutionality when he’d already ruled that SB 40 was inapplicable.

The Supreme Court cited a doctrine known as “constitutional avoidance,” which counsels against ruling on the constitutionality of a law if there are other grounds to resolve a case.

The Kansas Legislature enacted SB 40 in late 2021 to limit actions taken by the governor, school boards and local health officials. It created systems for speedy legal challenges to health orders and gave state lawmakers more oversight.

Among other things, the law authorized aggrieved parents or students to challenge board of education decisions within 30 days after they are issued. It also imposed timelines on the state’s trial courts to process lawsuits under the law.

In May 2021, two parents of children in the Shawnee Mission School District, Kristin Butler and Scott Bozarth, challenged the district’s mask policy for the just concluding school year. Both represented themselves and both claimed the policy violated federal law, “the ethics of the Nuremberg code” and a parent’s right to decide medical treatment for their child.

Hauber dismissed their suit a few weeks later. He found that the district had enacted its mask policy before SB 40 took effect and therefore it was inapplicable. He also found that Butler’s and Bozarth’s lawsuits were not timely.

But Hauber also took it upon himself to rule on SB 40’s constitutionality. And he found that the law violated the separation of powers doctrine by imposing timelines on court operations and also violated the due process rights of the Shawnee Mission School District.

In reversing Hauber, the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Dan Biles, acknowledged that its “decision may be just a temporary retreat from a raging storm, but it reflects necessary adherence to a long-standing doctrine of judicial self-restraint known as constitutional self-avoidance.”

“This rule,” Biles wrote, “strongly counsels against courts deciding a case on a constitutional question if it can be resolved in some other fashion, especially when the question concerns the validity of a statute enacted by our coordinate branches of state government.”

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, who was invited to intervene in the case and defend SB 40, argued that Hauber’s ruling had created “unnecessary and disruptive confusion” over the state’s emergency powers and urged the Supreme Court to uphold the law.

The case generated an enormous amount of interest, with numerous friends-of-the-court briefs filed by interested parties, including Gov. Laura Kelly, the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, Blue Valley School District, Kansas Association of School Boards Legal Assistance Fund, Kansas Justice Institute and a group of parents challenging mask mandates issued by the Olathe and Blue Valley school districts.

The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.
Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished by news media at no cost with proper attribution and a link to ksnewsservice.org.
See more at https://www.kcur.org/news/2022-01-07/kansas-supreme-court-reverses-johnson-county-judges-ruling-that-pandemic-law-is-unconstitutional.

Kansas organization seeks statewide removal of racist language from property documents

CAIR asks Gov. Kelly to take action, but Legislature also could step into fray

by Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — The Kansas chapter of the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization is urging the governor to issue an executive order aimed at stripping discriminatory language from residential property documents.

Despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1948 and the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 rendering racial restrictions unenforceable, documents created decades ago by homeowner associations or by individuals for filing with county governments in Kansas and other states include restrictions on renting, leasing or selling property to members of minority communities.

The Kansas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations requested Gov. Laura Kelly issue an order permitting cities in Kansas to delete offensive language in property documents.

The request highlighted work in the Johnson County city of Roeland Park, which initiated a review of options for dealing with discriminatory text in plats, deeds and covenants on file with the recorder of deeds. For example, files on Roeland Park contained documents prohibiting residential lots from being in the hands of a person of color. The city discovered racially intolerant language in documents associated with six neighborhoods.

“It is unacceptable that racist, discriminatory language continues to be present in property documents,” said Moussa Elbayoumy, board chairman of Kansas chapter of CAIR.

Elbayoumy said Kelly should consider an executive order allowing for “swift removal of such content from property documents in Roeland Park and statewide.”

“Doing so would be a step toward ensuring equal housing opportunities for all citizens,” Elbayoumy said.

The governor’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on a potential executive order, but an option would be for the Kansas Legislature to adopt a bill allowing a recorder of deeds to accept new documents deleting racial restrictions without incurring thousands of dollars in surveying or legal costs.

In 2021, Wyoming adopted a state law permitting homeowners to remove racially restrictive covenants from real estate deeds. In Virginia, the state enacted a statute to grant municipalities the power to repeal racist language.

CAIR’s stated mission is to protect civil rights, enhance understanding of Islam and empower American Muslims.

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2022/01/02/kansas-organization-seeks-statewide-removal-of-racist-language-from-property-documents/