During and after the 2025 Kansas legislative session, we are providing Johnson County lawmakers the opportunity to share their thoughts about what is happening in the state capitol.
The views expressed in each Capitol Update are solely those of the lawmaker. The topics are of the lawmakers’ choosing and are not fact-checked.
Below is a submission from Democratic Rep. Jarrod Ousley, who represents Kansas House District 24, covering parts of Merriam, Mission and Overland Park.
This is the final Capitol Update regarding the 2025 legislative session.
A constitutional crisis occurs when one branch of government ignores the legitimate power or orders of another branch. For example, when the executive or legislative branch ignores a ruling of the judiciary.
Kansas has experienced its fair share of the former in our forty years of school finance litigation and has forestalled the latter by preserving an independent Supreme Court appointment system.
Article 6, Section 6 of the Kansas Constitution demands that “the legislature shall make suitable provision for finance of the educational interests of the state” with courts holding that suitable must be both adequate and equitable.
The Kansas Constitution — and the Kansas Supreme Court upholding that constitution — have been the bulwark against profit-driven privatization of K-12 education and the drive to defund schools to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.
But it has been Kansans, rooted in a history of valuing public education, who have brought the lawsuits to the courts, who have voted out the legislators or governors who would defund schools, and who are steadfast in their support of Kansas children. Kansans know that the political pendulum doesn’t swing on its own, the people push and pull it.
Kansas Supreme Court justices are currently selected through a merit-based process. First, a nine-member nomination committee, made up of five lawyers elected by Kansas attorneys and four appointed by the governor, reviews applicants and nominees for the position.
This committee reviews character and legal acumen and presents to the governor three applicants from which to select a final nominee.
After a year of service, a justice faces a retention vote, to then serve a full six-year term until their next retention vote. Research has shown that merit process selection serves and supports an independent judiciary, allowing for consistent, impartial and unbiased outcomes, regardless of the identity of the litigants.
For Kansas, this is how we’ve preserved our constitutional obligation to fund education to our children and to each other.
This legislative session, for the second time in recent memory, an ideologically driven constitutional amendment was placed on an upcoming primary ballot. Preferring a biased umpire, rather than being held to the rules of the game, the Kansas Legislature’s far-right leadership selected the August 6, 2026, primary date, hoping a lower turnout primary will allow them to insert partisan politics into our highest court.
A judge with an incentive to pander to partisans undermines the credibility of the law and the faith of the people in the ruling. Special interests who can spend may be able to tilt the balance of justice in their favor, and those with little political capital lose hope in a fair hearing.
Kansans have defeated ideological constitutional amendments before and will have the chance to do so again.
We know that when constitutional crises come, we need to do the work to pull the pendulum back: advocating, rallying, communicating with elected officials to voice our concerns and voting out those who put partisan pandering before merit and independence.
It’s only a democracy if we can keep it, and the state of Kansas has been on the front lines of keeping it since the beginning.
