SHAWNEE COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a suspect arrested after a chase and crash Tuesday afternoon in Shawnee County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a Toyota Camry driven by Robert William Moran, 79, Jamestown ND, was southbound on U.S. 75 just north of 35^th Street.

A State Trooper was in pursuit of a vehicle driven by Robert Servantez, a  29-year-old convicted felon and absconder.  Servantez’s vehicle was northbound in the southbound lanes, spun out and struck the Camry after the KHP patrol unit engage in a tactical vehicle intervention due imminent danger to the public.

The Camry attempted an evasive maneuver to avoid the oncoming vehicle and traveled into the west ditch.

Moran was transported to the hospital in Topeka. A passenger in the Camry was not injured.

Servantez is being held in the Shawnee County Jail. He has previous convictions for aggravated battery, theft and was an absconder, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections. He has done jail time in Nemeha, Saline and Wyandotte County, according to the KDOC.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas’ Department for Children and Families is facing criticism from some in the child welfare community over its decision to loosen requirements for some staff positions.

Under new rules, the state will hire people with bachelor’s degrees to investigate claims of abuse and neglect. Formerly only licensed social workers were hired for the jobs.

Critics say loosening the restrictions amounts to lowering standards for important jobs that require a high level of knowledge and ethics. State officials note a growing number of children in foster care and high turnover in the investigator jobs, which can be emotionally taxing.

Department for Children and Families Secretary Gina Meier-Hummel did child protection investigations earlier in her career. She says unlicensed employees are capable of doing the work.

By CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN

Registering to vote in the upcoming Kansas primaries? A federal court ruling issued last week means you won’t need your passport, birth certificate or other citizenship papers to do that.

That ruling took immediate effect.

But Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach plans to appeal. So what happens next? Here’s a summary based on interviews with legal experts.

The status check

The lawyers who sued Kobach (the American Civil Liberties Union and attorneys from private law firms volunteering their time) are busy checking whether he’s complying with the ruling.

Kobach has a whole laundry list of things to do, from making sure state websites are updated to telling previously blocked voters that they can now vote.

By early July, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson wants to hear from both sides on whether he’s living up to that.

She’s monitoring it closely after finding the secretary in contempt for ignoring her orders — and after sanctioning him for “repeated and flagrant violations” of evidence rules for trial. (Robinson ordered him to go get some extra lessons in lawyering.)

The Court of Appeals

Kobach has to appeal by mid-July and says he’ll do so. It could take more than a year for a decision from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Both sides would need to file new briefs and offer oral arguments.

Kobach can ask the judges to expedite his case because it affects elections and voter rights. If they agree, their decision may move faster.

Either way, said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Irvine, the appeals court already partly weighed in on this case when it upheld an earlier court order against Kobach.

“A further appeal,” Hasen said, “would be unlikely to succeed.”

The 2018 elections

In the meantime, elections are on the horizon. The deadline for registering to vote in the Aug. 7 primary is July 17.

Before last week, Kansas was in a confusing spot because a preliminary court order had blocked part of its proof-of-citizenship law, but not all of it.

All you need to know now is this: You really, truly do not need citizenship papers to sign up for voting. If you see anything saying you need those documents to register at specific locations — such as your local driver’s license bureau — that information is out of date.

Footing the bill

Kansas taxpayers are on the hook for attorney fees unless an appeal upends the current ruling. So far the ACLU has filed for $52,000, but that’s just a sliver of what could be coming. Just how much?

“A substantial amount,” said Mark Johnson, a Kansas City lawyer who has yet to file his request for fees. “I’m sure that the defendant will not be surprised to hear that.”

He and others who worked on the lawsuit haven’t finished their calculations yet, and it’s possible fees wouldn’t be paid until appeals are done.

The new guy

In January, one of six men vying for Kobach’s job will take office and replace him as defendant.

Since the appeal likely won’t be done, that person will have the power to continue or kill it.

The lone Democrat in the race wants to kill it. The five Republicans are divided on the matter, but most want to press forward and turn the case in part, or wholly, over to the attorney general’s office.

Remember, Kobach acts as his own lawyer. Lumen Mulligan, a law professor at the University of Kansas, says handing off to the attorney general would be a return to the norm.

“That office is staffed up with lawyers,” he said. “They have an appellate division.”

The Supreme Court

Kobach could flat out lose his appeal. Or win. Or get a mixed result.

Last week’s ruling was actually two court cases wrapped in one. The first, based on federal law, overturned the proof-of-citizenship requirement as it applied to driver’s license offices. The second was a constitutional argument that proved more effective: It convinced Robinson not just to stop the law at driver’s license offices, but to block it everywhere else in Kansas, too.

So the appeals court could, for example, agree with how she handled one claim but not the other. Kansas could end up in a situation again where the citizenship requirement applies to some voter registration applications, but not others.

Kobach seems eager to press the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary. Assuming the 10th Circuit appeal fails and his successor wants to go that route, would the country’s highest court take the case?

There’s no way to know. But the Supreme Court rejects the vast majority of requests for review.

Hasen says the justices are more likely to wade into “circuit splits” — when two appeals courts are at odds on the same question.

“There’s no such ‘circuit split,’” he said, “involved in this case.”

Celia Llopis-Jepsen is a reporter for the Kansas News Service. You can reach her on Twitter @Celia_LJ.

PLEASANT HOPE, Mo. (AP) – An employee was seriously injured after an explosion inside a Missouri pyrotechnics company.

KSPR-TV reports that firefighters responded Tuesday to a call at the AM Pyrotechnics plant, a wholesale retailer that provides pyrotechnics for big fireworks shows.

Fire Protection District Fire Chief Jake Agee says they received a report of a loud explosion in the area. When they arrived, multiple explosions started inside the building. Firefighters say several workers had left the building before the fire but that one person was still inside.

Agee says the woman was extracted from the building with serious injuries and flown to a hospital.

He said, “Now we’re just kind of working to keep everybody back and keep everything safe.”

Agee says several fire departments responded to the blaze that is now under investigation.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A former University of Kansas student who hacked the school’s computer system to changing his failing F grades to As has been sentenced to probation.

20-year-old Varun Sarja used a keystroke logger program to change his grades in the 2016-17 school year when he was a freshman studying engineering.

Keystroke loggers enable hackers to obtain usernames and passwords by recording keystrokes on devices.

Sarja, of Olathe, was placed on academic probation in spring 2017. When records revealed he had achieved an A in math, an academic adviser and the math professor investigated.

Sarja pleaded guilty in May to felony identity theft and unlawful computer acts.

During sentencing Monday, Sarja learned he faces an 18-month prison sentence if he violates the terms of his probation.

DOUGLAS COUNTY– The Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) is investigating an officer involved shooting which occurred in Lawrence Monday night.

Just after 9:30 p.m., officers were dispatched to 713 West 25th Street for a reported shooting. Once they arrived at the residence, two gunshot victims were located and taken to area hospitals. Approximately five minutes after the shooting call, a responding officer in the area encountered a green SUV matching the description of the shooting suspect’s vehicle, and attempted to initiate a car stop near 21st and Louisiana Street.

During the incident, the officer exited his vehicle and the suspect struck the police vehicle and the officer with his SUV. The officer fired his weapon multiple times toward the SUV, where it is believed the suspect was injured by gunfire.

The suspect, later identified as Tommie John May, 58, Lawrence, then ran from the scene heading south where additional officers were able to arrest him at 22nd and Ohio Street. A firearm was recovered near 21st and Louisiana Street where the car stop was attempted.

Both the injured officer and the suspect were transported to Lawrence Memorial Hospital where they were treated for non-life threatening injuries and have since been released.

May currently confined in the Douglas County Jail.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is rescinding Obama-era guidance that encouraged schools to take a student’s race into account in order to promote diversity in admissions, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

The shift would give schools and universities the federal government’s blessing to take a race-neutral approach to students they consider for admission.

The action comes amid a high-profile court fight over admission at Harvard University as well as Supreme Court turnover expected to produce a more critical eye toward schools’ affirmative action policies.

The high court’s most recent significant ruling on the subject bolstered colleges’ use of race among many factors in the college admission process. But the opinion’s author, Anthony Kennedy, announced his retirement last week, giving President Donald Trump a chance to replace him with a justice who will be more reliably skeptical of admissions programs that take race and ethnicity into account.

A formal announcement was expected later Tuesday from the Justice and Education departments, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the new guidance ahead of its release.

The new policy would depart from the stance taken by the Obama administration, which in a 2011 policy document said schools have a “compelling interest” in ensuring a diverse student body. The guidance said that while race should not be the primary factor in an admission decision, schools could lawfully consider it in the interest of achieving diversity.

“Institutions are not required to implement race-neutral approaches if, in their judgment, the approaches would be unworkable,” the guidance said. “In some cases, race-neutral approaches will be unworkable because they will be ineffective to achieve the diversity the institution seeks.”

The administration issued a similar guidance document in 2016 aimed at giving schools a framework for “considering race to further the compelling interests in achieving diversity and avoiding racial isolation.” That document said elementary and secondary schools, in the interest of diversity, could consider race and socio-economic status in decisions on school zoning and location, grade realignment and enrollment.

The Obama approach replaced Bush-era policy from a decade earlier that discouraged affirmative action programs and instead encouraged the use of race-neutral alternatives, like percentage plans and economic diversity programs.

The Trump administration’s move appears in line with Bush administration policy. Such guidance does not have the force of law, but schools could use it to help defend themselves against lawsuits over their admission policies.

The Justice Department in the Trump administration had already signaled its concern about the use of race in admissions decisions. The department this year sided with Asian-American plaintiffs suing Harvard University who argue that the school unlawfully limits how many of Asian students are admitted.

Students for Fair Admissions, the group suing Harvard, is led by Ed Blum, a legal strategist who also helped white student Abigail Fisher sue the University of Texas for alleged discrimination in a case that went to the Supreme Court.

Blum said Tuesday that the organization “welcomes any governmental actions that will eliminate racial classifications and preferences in college admissions.” Harvard, meanwhile, said it would continue considering race as an admissions factor to bring together a “diverse campus community where students from all walks of life have the opportunity to learn with and from each other.”

Civil liberties groups immediately decried the move, saying it went against decades of court rulings that permit colleges and universities to take race into account.

“We condemn the Department of Education’s politically motivated attack on affirmative action and deliberate attempt to discourage colleges and universities from pursuing racial diversity at our nation’s colleges and universities,” Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement.

The Supreme Court has been generally accepting of considering race in admissions decisions. In 2016, the court, in an opinion written by Kennedy, granted affirmative action policies a narrow victory by permitting race to be among the factors considered in the college admission process.

The ruling bitterly disappointed conservatives who thought that Kennedy would be part of a Supreme Court majority to outlaw affirmative action in education. Justice Antonin Scalia died after the court heard arguments in the case but before the decision was handed down.

The new affirmative action guidance could add to an already contentious fight over the next justice. With Trump expected to announce his nominee next week, the issue should be a central part of any confirmation process, said Howard University School of Law Dean Danielle Holley-Walker.

She called the new guidance “highly unfortunate and counterproductive” and said the decision is another indication that the Justice Department under Attorney General Jeff Sessions is likely to be fairly aggressive toward schools that do continue to factor in race in admissions decisions.

“People have been talking about precedent in regard to Roe. v. Wade” — the landmark 1973 ruling affirming a woman’s right to abortion — “but it’s important to remember that affirmative action has been a precedent for the past 40 years,” she said. “This is a clear attack on precedent. Any Supreme Court nominee needs to be asked if they support precedent related to affirmative action.”

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