High-stakes abortion case unresolved as judge named finalist for KS Supreme Court
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- More than seven months after trial end, no ruling has been issued.
- Judge K. Christopher Jayaram is a finalist for the Kansas Supreme Court seat.
- Jayaram denied the state’s motion to stay the abortion case during selection.
More than seven months after the final gavel in a high-stakes Johnson County bench trial that could reshape access to reproductive healthcare in Kansas, no ruling has been handed down.
The challenge to existing abortion restrictions and a slate of strict new requirements that Republican lawmakers intend to impose on providers remains unresolved. Now, the judge who presided over the trial is one of three finalists for a seat on the Kansas Supreme Court.
The selection of District Court Judge K. Christopher Jayaram by the nominating commission responsible for screening applicants to the high court comes as Kansas voters prepare to decide in August whether to switch to directly electing state Supreme Court justices. Opponents of the ballot initiative have framed it as a calculated attempt to undermine abortion access.
It’s unclear how the lawsuit brought by Hodes & Nauser and Planned Parenthood Great Plains against the state of Kansas would proceed if Jayaram were to be chosen by Gov. Laura Kelly, who initially appointed him to the Johnson County bench in 2021.
Jayaram has already forcefully denied a motion by the Kansas Attorney General’s office to stay the case while the Supreme Court selection process plays out.
In a motion requesting the stay, Assistant Attorney General Dwight Carswell wrote that postponing the case would avoid “any appearance of a conflict of interest.” He cited a provision of the Kansas Code of Judicial Conduct that says decisions must not factor in “whether particular laws or litigants are popular or unpopular with … government officials.”
In a scathing ruling against the AG’s office, Jayaram characterized the request as “pretextual and without any apparent legal or factual basis.”
“There is no legitimate basis for either a stay or any other related relief, despite the State Defendants’ innuendo regarding some purported conflict that simply does not exist,” Jayaram wrote last month.
This is Jayaram’s second application since 2025 to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court while presiding over the abortion lawsuit. During a May 2025 status hearing after applying for the first time, Jayaram told attorneys for both sides that the trial dates should be delayed as a precaution in case his advancement through the selection process could derail proceedings.
“I have real concerns that we would get all the way through trial, and if I’m not there, there’s a mistrial, and we have to try the whole case again because I don’t know how somebody is going to step in and look at the transcript and decide this case. I think they need to be the person hearing the evidence and evaluating the credibility of witnesses,” Jayaram said, according to an official transcript of the hearing.
Jayaram made the short list to fill that vacancy, but Kelly ultimately passed him over in favor of Leawood attorney Larkin Walsh. Afterwards, the trial proceeded, playing out over six days in September and October, as witnesses for both sides gave sworn testimony and were subjected to cross-examination.
This time around, the other two finalists for the Supreme Court are fellow Johnson County District Court Judge Robert Wonnell and Douglas County District Court Judge Carl Folsom III.
Kansas abortion access at stake
Hodes & Nauser and Planned Parenthood Great Plains are challenging a bevy of Kansas abortion laws that they claim are designed to scare and shame people out of terminating pregnancies.
Some of the restrictions being challenged have been on the books for decades. Others, including a requirement that abortion providers survey women about their reasons for seeking the procedure and provide medically dubious information suggesting that pill abortions are reversible, were adopted by the Kansas Legislature in 2023.
Those and other pre-existing requirements, including Kansas’ 24-hour waiting period for abortions and a rule that physicians must listen to a fetus’s heartbeat 30 minutes before an abortion, were temporarily halted by Jayaram in the early stages of the court proceedings.
Abortion providers sensed an opening to challenge restrictions they have long opposed after Kansas voters in 2022 overwhelmingly rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have given lawmakers broad authority to further restrict or ban the procedure.
Abortion opponents say the restrictions at the heart of the lawsuit are necessary for women to understand all of their options before terminating a pregnancy.
Kansas Supreme Court amendment proposal
In 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the Kansas Constitution protects the right to abortion, a decision that cemented the state’s status as a beacon of abortion access when, three years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ended the federal right to terminate a pregnancy.
Months after Roe v. Wade was struck down, Kansas was the first state to hold a referendum on abortion access. Fifty-nine percent of Kansans who cast a ballot in 2022 voted against giving the Legislature the authority to ban the procedure.
Reproductive rights advocates say the judicial selection constitutional amendment proposal that will appear on this August’s primary ballot is an extension of the same effort by Republican lawmakers to undermine abortion access and bring to heel a state Supreme Court that they have long derided as too liberal.
At a Tuesday event in Olathe, Kelly told supporters that Kansas’ current model for selecting justices has served the state well by shielding the high court from overtly partisan politics.
“It has allowed our jurists to provide the fair and impartial rulings all Kansans are entitled to,” Kelly said. “Our current system must be maintained if we want to preserve women’s rights to bodily autonomy, if we want to protect our Kansas schools and if we want free and fair elections.”
Kansas is one of the 14 states with a merit selection system, which was first adopted by Missouri in 1940.
Proponents of direct election say it would empower voters and put an end to a system that gives attorneys too much say over who gets to serve on the most powerful court in the state.
