Kansas voters rejected a ballot measure that would have made members of the state’s Supreme Court electable by popular vote — a seemingly technical issue that had become a proxy battle for the future of abortion rights in the state, Decision Desk HQ projects.
Conservatives in the state’s Republican-led legislature put forth the proposal in an effort to remake Kansas’ high court, which in 2019 issued a pivotal decision holding that the state constitution guaranteed the right to an abortion. Three years later, in 2022, Kansas voters rejected a measure that would have undone the court’s decision — securing the Sunflower State’s status as a destination for people seeking abortion from neighboring states such as Texas and Oklahoma, which have both banned the procedure.
State Attorney General Kris Kobach — then a candidate for the position — suggested in 2022 that abortion opponents should pivot to change the makeup of the state Supreme Court. A move to elect justices, he said, could enable lawmakers to “slowly and quietly” develop an anti-abortion judiciary that might ultimately overturn Kansas’ abortion rights protections.
The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.
The measure’s failure means that members of the Kansas court will continue to be appointed through a process in which the governor selects people from a list curated by a nine-member commission. The commission includes lawyers across the state who are elected by other Kansas attorneys, as well as non-lawyers selected by the governor.
Kansas Republicans argued the measure would impose needed transparency and accountability into the selection of court members. The measure’s opponents also argued that changing the court’s selection mechanism would empower billionaire donors to select justices, a point hammered in a TV ad from a progressive coalition called Kansas United for Impartial Groups.
Other states have indicated the potency of abortion in state court elections, and the massive levels of spending that can be funnelled in when voters directly elect members of their high courts.
In Wisconsin, where Supreme Court members are elected by popular vote, judicial elections in 2023 and 2025 — both races where liberal candidates emphasized their support of reproductive rights — shattered spending records, indicating “an era of rapidly intensifying state judicial politics,” wrote Douglas Keith, a deputy director at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan civil rights group.
Opponents of the measure — including the state’s chapter of the ACLU and Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes, the healthcare provider’s advocacy arm — also framed the race as a contest about reproductive rights and an effort to relitigate the 2022 election.
“Kansas is surrounded by states with abortion bans. We continue to see people coming from out of state for care here,” said Emily Wales, who heads Planned Parenthood Great Plains. “Abortion rights are clearly the focus of the legislature.”
In 2024, the most recent year for which state data is available, about three-quarters of all abortions in Kansas — around 15,000 out of just over 20,000 — were for people from other states, namely Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri. Since then, Missouri has passed ballot measures restoring state abortion rights. In Texas and Oklahoma, abortion remains almost entirely outlawed.
