By DAN MARGOLIES

Mary Anne Sause was listening to Michael Savage, the conservative radio show host, when Louisburg, Kansas, police showed up at her apartment door. They’d fielded a complaint that her radio was playing too loud.

The retired nurse didn’t open the door at first. She said she was wary after she’d been raped years earlier. She called a friend, who came over just before the police returned and banged on the door. She opened it but left the screen door locked.

“They wouldn’t tell me what they were there for,” she said. “I was told if I didn’t let them in I would get a ticket.”

A devout Catholic active in the anti-abortion movement, Sause said she showed the two Louisburg officers the pocket Constitution she always kept handy.

“That is just a piece of paper that doesn’t work here,” she said one of the officers told her.

And so began a legal saga that ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court, culminating Thursday with a brief unsigned opinion finding that a lower court should not have dismissed Sause’s civil rights complaint against the officers.

“I’m not the type to go out and drive down Louisburg and say, ‘Hey, look at me,’ but it was so sweet, thank you, God, and tears of joy and happiness,” Sause said. “And you know, it’s a fight for our country also.”

The case has both First and Fourth Amendment implications. That’s because after Sause admitted the officers to her apartment — that’s where Fourth Amendment principles governing search and seizure come in — they told her she was going to jail. She then asked one of the officers for permission to pray — that’s where her First Amendment religious rights arise — which he granted. When she dropped to her knees and began to pray, however, the other officer mockingly ordered her to get up and stop praying.

That encounter with the police occurred in 2013. Sause said she spent the next two years seeking an apology from the Louisburg police. When that didn’t happen, she sued them in 2015, alleging they violated her constitutional rights.

“We are glad that the Supreme Court recognized the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens like Miss Sause and that she’s able to have her day in court. We’re glad because no American should be told they can’t pray in their own home,” said Stephanie Taub, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute in Plano, Texas, a nonprofit legal organization that describes itself as focused on religious freedom and the First Amendment.

Taub, who took on Sause’s case after Sause had initially represented herself, said First Liberty reached out to Sause after her complaint was dismissed. The judge had read the complaint Sause drafted as claiming the police violated her First Amendment rights when they ordered her to stop praying and violated her Fourth Amendment rights by refusing to let her enter her bedroom when they were in her apartment.

But the judge threw out the complaint, finding the officers were shielded from liability under the doctrine of qualified immunity. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal, which paved the way for Thursday’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Taub said her organization decided to get involved after reading a sentence in the trial court’s decision stating that while the order to stop praying might have offended Sause, it didn’t implicate her First Amendment rights.

“That’s a little bit of a paraphrase, but essentially. it was saying that being ordered to stop praying in your own home didn’t burden her free exercise (of religion) rights at all,” Taub said. “So we thought that was an egregious error of law, and we got involved to try to overturn that.”

While Sause only presented her First Amendment claim to the Supreme Court, the court found that her First and Fourth amendment claims were “inextricable” and sent the case back for further consideration.

The right to pray is “unquestionably” protected by the First Amendment, the high court said, although it noted there are circumstances under which police can prevent a person from praying. For example, it said, a suspect being transported to jail doesn’t have a right to delay the trip “by insisting on first engaging in conduct that, at another time, would be protected by the First Amendment.”

But the court said it was unclear in Sause’s case whether the police had legitimate grounds for entering her apartment and remaining there. And it said it also wasn’t clear what they wanted her to do after she was told to stop praying.

Sause, 61, said she’s a big supporter of law enforcement, “but they came on in and it was just a nightmare.”

“I kept praying and I was like, Lord, I don’t know what to do, but I had to stand up for God and for myself and for people in the country,” Sause said. “So I filed a pro se (complaint) in district court here and it was just a miracle how it all happened.”

Louisburg Police Chief Timothy Bauer, who is named in Sause’s lawsuit, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Dan Margolies is a senior reporter and editor in conjunction with KUCR and the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @DanMargolies

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A former teacher at Gardner Edgerton High School has received a suspended prison sentence and three years’ probation for having sexual contact with a student.

45-year-old Todd Burd was ordered Friday to serve 30 days in jail as a condition of his probation. He was also required to register as a sex offender.

Burd pleaded guilty in April to unlawful sexual relations. He had initially been charged with aggravated criminal sodomy after a 16-year-old boy reported being assaulted while sitting in Burd’s pickup truck.

Burd taught music and was the choir director at Gardner Edgerton High School in late 2016, when the incident happened. Burd received the Gardner-Edgerton district’s Teacher of the Year honor in 2015.

DOUGLAS COUNTY — A Kansas man avoided injury in an emergency landing just before noon Saturday in Douglas County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a rebuilt Cessna vintage 1970 Vietnam aircraft piloted by David A. McFarlane, 67, Baldwin, was attempting to practice fail engine maneuvers.

He attempted to restart the engine and the engine failed to start. He tried to turn around and land at the airport, lost altitude and tried to land in a bean field.

The plane landed in a private residence, struck a wood fence and came to a rest in a field next to the residence.

McFarlane was not injured.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it will more than double the amount of water released into the Missouri River from the river’s lower-most dam over the coming weeks.

Releases from Gavins Point Dam, between Nebraska and South Dakota, were reduced to 24,000 cubic feet per second in mid-June due to high flows downstream of the Missouri River reservoir system.

The Corps said in a news release Friday that Gavins Point releases will be stepped up over the next several days, reaching approximately 50,000 cubic feet per second by early to mid-July, as downstream flows drop off. The Corps says releases from all Missouri River reservoir system dams will be maintained at higher-than-average rates over the next several months.

The announcement came as the river at Omaha crested at nearly 29 feet due to recent heavy rains, causing minor flooding of low-lying areas, mostly on the Iowa side.

Levels downriver, including in Kansas and Missouri, will also be affected.

KANSAS CITY– A Kansas man was sentenced this week to 18 years in federal prison for trafficking in methamphetamine, according to U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister.

David C. True, 32, Olathe, pleaded guilty to one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine.

In his plea, he admitted he was a member of a drug trafficking organization that distributed meth in the Johnson County area. He admitted to regularly handling up to 10 pounds of methamphetamine a week, acting as both a buyer and a seller. In addition, he possessed firearms, which he was prohibited from doing because of a previous felony conviction.

WASHINGTON (AP) -In major cities and tiny towns, marchers gathered across America Saturday, moved by accounts of children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, in the latest act of mass resistance against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

Quiet reflection, not bullhorns and chants, was seen at a rally to protest the Trump administration’s immigration policies in southwestern Kansas.

The rally in Dodge City was among several in Kansas.

HAPPENING NOW: Lawrence, Kansas marches to #KeepFamiliesTogether #lfk pic.twitter.com/91ZYbAmliH

— CM Schneider (@cmschneider) June 30, 2018

Thank you, Wichita!!! pic.twitter.com/uEGOUfW6eY

— Frankie (@goggans_frankie) June 30, 2018

More than 700 planned marches drew hundreds of thousands of people across the country, from immigrant-friendly cities like New York and Los Angeles to conservative Appalachia and Indiana to the front lawn of a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, near a detention center where migrant children were being held in cages.

There, people held American and Texas flags and signs depicting a migrant father, mother and child as the Holy Family with haloed heads traveling through the desert.

About 100 people turned out for the Dodge City rally. It was sponsored by the local Catholic Church and felt more like a Mass than a protest.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) – A former Stone County deputy has been sentenced to 120 days in jail and probation for a deadly hit-and-run crash in Springfield last year.

41-year-old Shawn Bouley, of Reeds Spring, was sentenced Friday after he admitted to fatally hitting 45-year-old Bradley Bizzle with his car on Jan. 22, 2017, and then fleeing the scene.

Bizzle died at a hospital. Bouley’s car was found the next day. Investigators say Bouley told them he was “drunk” or “buzzed” and was aware that he had hit something, but that he didn’t stop because he was scared. Prosecutors say that since Bouley wasn’t found until the day after the crash, there was no physical evidence of intoxication.

Bouley was a jail deputy in Stone County at time of the crash. He was also once a Reeds Spring police officer.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas organization that received public funding to host a Junior Olympics event last year has left more than $70,000 in unpaid bills.

University of Kansas Spokesman Joe Monaco that Lawrence Sports Corporation owes the university at least $73,000 in unpaid services. The city of Lawrence gave the corporation $150,000 to host the 2017 USA Track & Field Junior Olympic Championships at the university.

More than 8,000 athletes competed in the event and thousands of spectators came to watch.

Monaco said the university hasn’t received a response from the corporation regarding the outstanding bill. A roughly $110,000 bill for public safety and housing services was paid in full, he said.

City Manager Tom Markus requested in May access to the corporation’s financial records for the city to review. Markus made the request in May. Markus said Corporation Executive Director Bob Sanner agreed to provide financial information involving invoices related to the city’s contribution, but wouldn’t allow full access to their records.

“I’d like to see a full accounting of the whole operation,” Markus said. “And I think the public would like to see a full accounting of the operation, to know that when people ask us for these contributions that we know that that’s what it takes to actually make it successful.”

The Kansas Secretary of State’s records indicate that the nonprofit was incorporated in 1990. Records also show that the company is delinquent in filing its 2017 annual report.

The media couldn’t immediately reach the corporation’s leaders for comment.