Kansas Supreme Court hears case on job protection for teachers

The Kansas Supreme Court reviewed Tuesday whether lawmakers violated the state constitution when they stripped teachers of a job protection two years ago.

The Kansas National Education Association, which represents more than 20,000 educators, contends that the Legislature ran afoul of the Kansas Constitution’s one-subject rule when it inserted a provision that eliminated teacher tenure into a school finance bill in 2014.

Stephen McAllister, the state’s solicitor general, said that the Legislature crafted the measure as an education bill rather than an appropriations bill and that all of the provisions related to education.

Although bills include funding, that “does not make them necessarily appropriations bills,” McAllister said. He said the starting point for the court should be “what does the Legislature say it is.”

Jason Walta, an attorney for the KNEA’s parent union, the National Education Association, said this argument gives lawmakers “carte blanche to define the subject of the bill … regardless of the content” and “threatens to reduce the one-subject rule to a game.”

A Shawnee County judge dismissed the case last year, finding the bill did not violate the one-subject rule and that the KNEA lacked standing in the case because it could not prove an injury. The KNEA appealed and the case went to the Kansas Supreme Court.

Walta said the union’s members lost a statutory right when the Legislature eliminated a requirement that teachers who have worked three or more years for a district be granted an administrative hearing before they could be fired. He said that should give the union standing in the case.

David Schauner, general counsel for the KNEA, said the union is representing individual teachers in six other pending cases, including a lawsuit that will be filed in Sedgwick County this week. Schauner contends that teachers who earned tenure prior to the law change cannot lose that protection retroactively.

Schauner would not say which Sedgwick County district the union planned to sue. Wichita, the state’s largest school district, is one of the few districts that has continued to guarantee administrative hearings for teachers since the law change.

This story was originally published September 13, 2016 at 11:08 AM with the headline "Kansas Supreme Court hears case on job protection for teachers."