Kick the Kansas Bar Association to the Curb

Hallelujah!!!  Pam Bondi, U.S. Attorney General, on May 29th, kicked the leftist American Bar Association (ABA) to the curb, ending the association’s decades old stranglehold on filling vacancies on the federal bench. Yes, their heavily weighted, inside track and vaunted rating system based on nominees’ non-public information is OVER!!! They are now descending from their lofty perch to terra firma.

Pam Bondi stated that…”The ABA is free to comment on judicial nominations along with other activist organizations, there is no justification for treating the ABA differently from such other activist organizations and the Department of Justice will not do so.”(emphasis added)

National Review stated in 2019, “The organization’s ideological bias has long tainted its ratings of judicial nominees. An entire book on the subject was written as early as 1965, Joel B. Grossman’s Lawyers and Judges: The ABA and the Politics of Judicial Selection.”

Politics within the judicial selection process? Yes, the sun doth rise in the east, every morning, Virginia, proving there is truth! And the truth in Kansas is that we are the ONLY state in the union in which the state Bar Association (KBA) controls the judicial selection process at EVERY level of our judiciary, from the State Supreme Court down to the magistrate level. Read this carefully, THE ONLY STATE IN THE UNION.  ONE OUT OF 50!!!

What??? Yes, you read that correctly. The stranglehold the KBA has on filling Kansas judicial vacancies is obviously reflected in the make-up of the judiciary in Kansas.  We have ONE conservative on the State Supreme Court, Caleb Stegall.

14 of the 31 Kansas Judicial Districts have escaped the insanity and elect their district and magistrate judges in partisan elections, including Wichita. The other 17 districts, including Johnson County, sigh beneath the leftist tyranny of the Kansas Bar Association.

How in the world has this happened in Kansas? Ah, we live in the land of non-partisan worship which flooded into the judicial selection process in 1958. The mantra is, “We must not have politics in selecting our judges.” Ok, please tell me of any human activity where politics is not a part of decision making? And in every non-partisan election, Democrats are hiding their identity.

We, Kansans do have a glimmer of hope. In the 2025 Kansas Legislative Session, a bill was passed to place a constitutional amendment on the August 2026 ballot for direct election of our State Supreme Court justices. According to the Topeka Capital Journal, “The bill is opposed by several different organizations that represent the legal profession, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Kansas Organization of State Employees and Planned Parenthood of the Great Plains.” (Emphasis added) Well, isn’t that shocking??? Liberal politics in the judicial selection process.

The constitutional amendment, as proposed, is not perfect. It does not state that the elections will be statewide and partisan, which are MAJOR flaws and will be left to future legislators to decide. Despite the flaws, I do support the passage, and if elected governor, I will go to the mat to make sure the elections are statewide and partisan to ensure conservative representation on the bench.

Kansas, it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee. Let’s follow Pam Bondi’s lead and kick the Bar Association to the curb at all levels of the judicial selection process.

Charlotte O’Hara
Governor for Kansas, 2026