Both Kansas, Missouri Republicans use abortion to try to change justices | Opinion
What do Kansas and Missouri Republicans do when they can’t win playing by the rules?
They try to change the referees and stack the deck, of course.
Maybe they even throw a tantrum for good measure.
The tantrum tendency was certainly on display Wednesday in Jefferson City, where GOP legislators canceled the annual State of the Judiciary speech from Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice W. Brent Powell. That cancellation happened just a few days after the court struck down the new law — called the Let Politicians Lie Act by critics — that restricts judges from rewriting misleading ballot questions.
And, well, Show-Me State Republicans have just about had enough with the whole checks and balances thing.
Missouri high court judges “want to act like they’re the legislature,” sniffed State Sen. Rick Brattin of Harrisonville.
A canceled speech might be the beginning. Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin reintroduced a plan to scuttle the current system of Missouri Supreme Court appointments in favor of letting voters directly elect justices.
“I do think the current system is ripe for a conversation that hasn’t happened in a long time,” House Majority Leader Alex Riley told the Missouri Independent.
It’s a “conversation” that is already happening in Kansas, where Republicans are pushing an August ballot measure to elect Kansas Supreme Court justices directly.
Those dastardly, freedom-loving justices
What this whole thing is about, on both sides of the state line: abortion.
While Missouri Republicans were refusing to let Powell speak on Wednesday, in fact, Kansas conservatives were rallying against abortion rights — and taking dead aim at the Kansas Supreme Court.
“Kansas has really become, unfortunately, the abortion capital of the Midwest,” Attorney General Kris Kobach told the annual March for Life rally. “So how did we get there?” (His comments were reported by the Kansas Reflector.)
It wasn’t the state Legislature, he said. And it wasn’t Congress.
No, it was those dastardly justices in Topeka.
“The court,” Kobach said, “invented an invisible right to abortion in the Kansas Constitution.”
Obviously, the way to strike back against that is to change the court.
It’s true that the Kansas Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the state constitution’s guarantee to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” includes a woman’s autonomy over her own body. The court reaffirmed that decision in 2024.
But it’s also true that nearly 60% of state voters resoundingly affirmed the court’s abortion reasoning in 2022 when they rejected a state constitutional amendment that would have empowered the Kansas Legislature to move forward with a ban.
Abortion, we note once again, is also at the center of the Missouri GOP’s complaints. Why are Republicans angry about their court’s ruling on referendum ballot language? Because they want to trick the state’s voters into approving an abortion ban the electorate already rejected in 2024.
Get Charles Koch and Elon Musk?
Which is why it’s so hilarious that Kansas Republicans are pitching voters on a change to judicial selection as an act of democratization. “Voters will now get to decide whether to reclaim the right to vote for justices,” Kobach said last year. Missouri Republicans — if they follow suit — will probably try the same approach.
Don’t you believe them.
Again: Voters in Kansas and Missouri have already affirmed their support for abortion rights. Anti-abortion rights conservatives in both states, refusing to take no for an answer, are trying to do end-runs around their electorates by picking high court justices instead.
Republicans can’t replace their voters. But they can fix the judicial game a bit. Maybe get billionaires such as Charles Koch and Elon Musk to help them a bit.
And maybe they’ll succeed.
Maybe not. The same citizenry that rejected abortion bans — and in Missouri approved marijuana, Medicaid expansion and a new minimum wage over GOP objections — will be the same ones picking justices. All the billionaire money in the world won’t necessarily persuade citizens to vote against their own rights and interests.
Which raises a question: If Kansas and Missouri Republicans upend their judicial processes and still lose, who will they blame next? They can’t exactly boycott their own voters.
This story was originally published January 30, 2026 at 5:08 AM with the headline "Both Kansas, Missouri Republicans use abortion to try to change justices | Opinion."
CORRECTION: This commentary originally misstated the month of a ballot measure that would elect Kansas Supreme Court justices directly.
