By JOHN HANNA

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Abortion opponents in Kansas have been bracing themselves for nearly two years for a ruling from the state’s highest court that protects the right to have an abortion and potentially upends politics in a state long at the center of the national debate.

The Kansas Supreme Court is relatively liberal in a state with a Republican-dominated Legislature that has strong anti-abortion majorities.

Court watchers also are asking: Why is it taking so long for the justices to rule?

No one outside the court knows for sure and the justices are not saying, as is their long-standing custom. One educated guess is that they still are wrestling with the implications of declaring that the state constitution protects abortion rights.

That was the core legal issue when the court heard attorneys’ arguments in March 2017 in a major abortion lawsuit . An abortion-rights decision could allow state courts in Kansas to chart their own course on abortion and invalidate restrictions that the federal courts would uphold.

“What’s the test for that?” said Jeffrey Jackson, a Washburn University of Topeka law professor. “There’s any number of weird possible decisions that you can get to.”

The case arises from abortion opponents’ numerous legislative victories during eight years under Republican governors. Democratic Gov.-elect Laura Kelly, a strong abortion rights supporter, takes office Monday, but the Legislature emerged from last year’s elections more conservative — and as anti-abortion as ever.

GOP conservatives’ power in the Legislature surged following “Summer of Mercy” protests in 1991 against the late Dr. George Tiller’s clinic in Wichita, among a few in the U.S. known to do late-term abortions. An anti-abortion zealot shot Tiller to death in 2009.

Legislators debate abortion annually. Kansas recorded its lowest number of abortions in 30 years in 2017, fewer than 6,800 — 46 percent less than the peak of more than 12,400 in 1999.

“It’s more important than ever for Kansas to recognize that women have protections under the state constitution,” said Genevieve Scott, a Center for Reproductive Rights attorney. “Any time that a court recognizes women’s rights, it has an important impact in shaping our national discourse.”

Despite abortion foes’ political rise, six of the seven Kansas Supreme Court justices were appointed by Democratic or moderate Republican governors.

In 2016, abortion opponents, GOP conservatives and others upset with capital punishment decisions tried unsuccessfully to oust four of those justices when they faced a yes-or-no statewide vote on whether they would remain on the court for another six years. Anti-abortion leaders cited the case now before the court as one reason.

During arguments in the abortion case in 2017, four justices peppered the state’s solicitor general with skeptical questions when he argued that the state constitution cannot protect abortion rights because abortion generally was illegal when it was drafted in 1859.

Mary Kay Culp, executive director of the anti-abortion group Kansans for Life, worries that the decision will make it impossible for legislators “to pass pro-life bills.”

“That’s worst-case scenario, and that’s kind of what we expect,” she said.

Her fears are not unfounded. California voters added a right to privacy to their state’s constitution in 1972, and courts there have struck down even restrictions on public funding for abortions. In 2000, Tennessee’s highest court declared that the state constitution protected abortion rights; abortion foes did not pass an amendment until 2014.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled last year that the state constitution protected abortion rights.

The Kansas case involves the state’s first-in-the-nation ban on a common second trimester procedure. Two abortion providers sued just before the law was supposed to take effect in 2015. It has been on hold since.

A district court judge agreed with their arguments that that broad language in the state constitution’s Bill of Rights implies a right for a woman to obtain an abortion.

The Kansas Supreme Court decision has taken so long that it is compared to a small number of heavily litigated capital punishment cases. Spokeswoman Lisa Taylor said the Supreme Court’s goal is to have 95 percent of its cases decided within nine months of oral arguments.

“It’s a groundbreaking case of first impression, but my goodness, two years?” said Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican whose office is defending the 2015 law.

The state’s Bill of Rights says Kansas residents have “natural rights,” including “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and that “free governments” are created for their “equal protection and benefit.” Abortion opponents argue that the “life” clause protects the fetus in the womb — not the right to abort it.

“Maybe the fact that it takes so long to figure out whether there’s a previously undiscovered right in the Kansas Constitution suggests they’re having to look awfully hard,” Schmidt said.

Culp believes the Supreme Court didn’t want to issue its decision during the governor’s race last year because it would have hurt Kelly’s campaign by energizing angry anti-abortion voters.

But Jackson said if the justices have concluded that the Kansas Constitution does protect abortion rights, they still must consider how far such protections go. He said they might not have a majority yet for “any single opinion.” He worked for the court several times between 1992 and 2003 and said he saw cases sometimes “going back and forth.”

Abortion rights advocates appear to be less frustrated with the delay because the 2015 law is blocked. Several declined to speculate on what is taking the court so long.

“If the Supreme Court finds a right to abortion in the state constitution — I mean, that is huge,” said Rachel Sweet, policy director for the political affiliate of Planned Parenthood Great Plains.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas officials are offering an unconventional housing program to mentally ill homeless people that they hope will ease overcrowding at state hospitals.

The state Department for Aging and Disability Services is considering offering the Housing First program beyond Wichita, Shawnee County and Wyandotte County. The program deviates from traditional housing assistance programs because it has no curfew and sobriety requirements.

“What this lets us do is get these folks who need help out of this cycle where they’re in the state hospital, they get discharged, and then pretty soon they end up back on the street,” said agency spokeswoman Angela de Rocha. “This intervenes in that cycle and stops it.”

The department secured legislative support last year to maintain the three existing programs. It’s seeking an additional $250,000 to help homeless communities in other parts of the state.

More than 320 residents have entered the program and more than 240 have found a permanent home. There were more than 2,000 homeless people across the state last year, according to state data.

Melissa Bogart, who works in housing employment and benefits for the department, said it’s been effective in Wichita, which has the state’s largest homeless population.

“What we’ve seen is persons being housed at a much quicker rate — people with a roof over the head, people being safe, people being up off the street,” Bogart said.

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SHAWNEE COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a shooting.

By Jim McLean

Think of Laura Kelly as the fix-it governor.

As in she needs to fix what, by most accounts, is a state government in desperate need of repair.

For the first year or two of her administration, her biggest job will be restoring the capacity of state agencies crippled by budget cuts and the exodus of employees with the skills and institutional knowledge needed to keep the trains running on time.

Or, more to the point, balance the state budget, adequately fund schools and ensure that foster kids are placed in safe and stable homes.

She may want to start with high-profile initiatives to reduce the sales tax on food, restore the budget cuts suffered by universities and reboot the multi-billion-dollar highway-building program that former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback abandoned because of self-inflicted money problems.

Reality demands a more cautious approach. Kelly must closely monitor spending while triaging needs and addressing the most urgent problems. Ensuring the safety of foster children in the custody of the Department for Children and Families is likely at the top of that list.

Expectations for a new road program run high, but Kelly needs to first give new secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation Julie Lorenz time to rebuild the agency so that it can do the basics — plow snow and mend potholes without borrowing money from the bond market.

At the Kansas Department of Commerce, incoming Secretary David Toland must rebuild the rudderless agency’s presence in the eco-devo world. It’s one that’s been systematically diminished by understaffed programs and the closing of most of the state’s trade offices around the world.

Some might argue that restoring a basic level of competency to Kansas government sets a low bar for Kelly. But given the work that needs to be done, it seems a fair measuring stick.

Let’s remember, Kelly was a reluctant candidate. Former Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, among others, had to talk her into running. Perhaps that was because as a longtime member of the Senate’s budget-writing committee, she had a notion of how difficult the job would be.

Still, after some coercion and a lot of contemplation — done during long walks along the wooded bluffs overlooking the Kansas River and Cedar Crest, the governor’s residence — Kelly concluded she could handle the job.

Then she got elected. Sitting through her first budget briefings, she said, it became apparent that the “devastation” was “even worse than I thought.”

Regardless, it’s now Kelly’s job to fix things.

Our first indication of how she plans to do that comes next week when she lays out her budget priorities in a speech to a joint session of the Legislature.

We should all be paying attention.

Jim McLean is the chief political reporter for the Kansas News Service. He’s covered politics and state government for more than 35 years. You can reach him on Twitter @jmcleanks. 

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The state of Missouri is declining to disclose the identities of those who have paid licensing fees to grow or distribute medical marijuana.

The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services denied requests for copies of forms filed with licensing fees. The Associated Press filed a similar request Thursday.

Health department director Randall Williams cites the text of Amendment 2, which voters approved on Nov. 6. It states that the department “shall maintain the confidentiality of reports or other information” from applicants.

John Payne of New Approach Missouri, the group that successfully pushed for medical marijuana legalization, says the provision was aimed at keeping sensitive information private. But he says he sees no reason why the name of applicants wouldn’t be made public.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Outgoing Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer has granted two pardons and commuted the sentence of an Emporia war veteran.

Colyer on Friday reduced the sentence of Regina Carter to about 3½ years. She was sentenced in 2016 to eight years in prison for drug possession with intent to deliver. Colyer noted Carter’s original sentence was longer than many others given to first-time offenders. He also noted Carter suffered PTSD after serving in Iraq and received an honorable discharge from the Army.

Colyer also granted pardons to Chris Rickerson and Wandalen Thomas for felony drug possession convictions. Rickerson now runs Elite Staffing Solutions in Wichita. Thomas, who lives in Fountain, Colorado, runs a barbershop for military members and their families.

The governor denied pardon requests of 21 other applicants.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Missouri and its governor cannot be sued over the state’s underfunded and understaffed public defender system, a federal appeals court has ruled.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday said the legal doctrine of sovereign immunity means the state can’t commit a legal wrong and cannot be sued unless the legislature makes exceptions in state law, KCUR reported .

American Civil Liberties Union-Missouri filed the class action lawsuit in 2017. The organization argued the governor and state have ignored their constitutional obligation to provide meaningful legal representation to indigent clients by not providing enough funds to address chronic underfunding and understaffing in the public defender system . ACLU-Missouri argues in the lawsuit that Mississippi is the only state to allocate less than the $355 per case that Missouri spends for its indigent defense budget.

The lawsuit will continue against the head of the public defender system, Michael Barrett, and the public defender commission.

The decision, written by Judge Duane Benton, does not address the merits of the lawsuit. But the ruling means the legislature can’t be forced to appropriate more money to the system.

“It would be easier if the state itself were a defendant,” said Tony Rothert, legal director of ACLU-Missouri.

Rothert said if the ACLU prevails against the other defendants, the court could order the state to reduce public defenders’ caseloads, or prosecutors could use their discretion to not bring charges for certain crimes. Or defendants who aren’t considered dangerous could be released on bail and put on a waiting list for public defenders rather than staying in jail while awaiting trial.

“So there are numerous ways to solve this problem,” Rothert said. “The easiest way, I think, was to give more money so the defender’s office could hire more lawyers. But there are other ways that might even be better for justice overall.”

The lawsuit seeks class-action status to cover all indigent defendants in Missouri charged with crimes that carry prison sentences. Missouri’s public defenders typically handle 80,000 cases a year, so the potential class could be in the tens of thousands of individuals.

When the lawsuit was filed, Missouri had 370 public defenders statewide. Studies have said Missouri’s system should have nearly twice that many public defenders to meet standards set by the American Bar Association for adequate representation of clients.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of requests by men to bring in child and adolescent brides to live in the United States were approved over the past decade, according to government data obtained by The Associated Press. In one case, a 49-year-old man applied for admission for a 15-year-old girl.

The approvals are legal: The Immigration and Nationality Act does not set minimum age requirements. And in weighing petitions for spouses or fiancees, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services goes by whether the marriage is legal in the home country and then whether the marriage would be legal in the state where the petitioner lives.

But the data raises questions about whether the immigration system may be enabling forced marriage and about how U.S. laws may be compounding the problem despite efforts to limit child and forced marriage. Marriage between adults and minors is not uncommon in the United States, and most states allow children to marry with some restrictions.

There were more than 5,000 cases of adults petitioning on behalf of minors and nearly 3,000 examples of minors seeking to bring in older spouses or fiances, according to the&nbsp;<a href=”https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Child%20Marriage%20staff%20report%201%209%202019%20EMBARGOED.pdf”>data requested</a>&nbsp;by the Senate Homeland Security Committee in 2017 and compiled into a report.&nbsp;

Some victims of forced marriage say the lure of a U.S. passport combined with lax U.S. marriage laws are partly fueling the petitions.

“My passport ruined my life,” said Naila Amin, a dual citizen from Pakistan who grew up in New York City.

She was forcibly married at 13 in Pakistan and applied for papers for her 26-year-old husband to come to the country.

“People die to come to America,” she said. “I was a passport to him. They all wanted him here, and that was the way to do it.”

Amin, now 29, said she was betrothed to her first cousin Tariq when she was just 8 and he was 21. The petition was eventually terminated after she ran away. She said the ordeal cost her a childhood. She was in and out of foster care and group homes, and it took a while to get her life on track.

“I was a child. I want to know: Why weren’t any red flags raised? Whoever was processing this application, they don’t look at it? They don’t think?” Amin asked.

There is a two-step process for obtaining U.S. immigration visas and green cards. Petitions are first considered by USCIS. If granted, they must be approved by the State Department. Overall, there were 3.5 million petitions received from budget years 2007 through 2017.

Over that period, there were 5,556 approvals for those seeking to bring minor spouses or fiancees, and 2,926 approvals by minors seeking to bring in older spouses, according to the data. Additionally, there were 204 for minors by minors. Petitions can be filed by U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

“It indicates a problem. It indicates a loophole that we need to close,” Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told the AP.

In nearly all the cases, the girls were the younger person in the relationship. In 149 instances, the adult was older than 40, and in 28 cases the adult was over 50, the committee found. Among the examples: In 2011, immigration officials approved a 14-year-old’s petition for a 48-year-old spouse in Jamaica. A petition from a 71-year-old man was approved in 2013 for his 17-year-old wife in Guatemala.

There are no nationwide statistics on child marriage, but data from a few states suggests it is far from rare. State laws generally set 18 as the minimum age for marriage, yet every state allows exceptions. Most states let 16- and 17-year-olds marry if they have parental consent, and several states — including New York, Virginia and Maryland — allow children under 16 to marry with court permission.

Fraidy Reiss, who campaigns against coerced marriage as head of a group called Unchained at Last, researched data from her home state of New Jersey. She determined that nearly 4,000 minors, mostly girls, were married in the state from 1995 to 2012, including 178 who were under 15.

“This is a problem both domestically and in terms of immigration,” she said.

Reiss — who says she was forced into an abusive marriage by her Orthodox Jewish family when she was 19 — said that often cases of child marriage via parental consent involve coercion, with a girl forced to marry against her will.

“They are subjected to a lifetime of domestic servitude and rape,” she said. “And the government is not only complicit; they’re stamping this and saying: Go ahead.”

The data was requested in 2017 by Johnson and then-Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, the committee’s top Democrat. Johnson said it took a year to get the information, showing there needs to be a better system to track and vet the petitions.

“Our immigration system may unintentionally shield the abuse of women and children,” the senators said in the letter.

USCIS didn’t know how many of the approvals were granted by the State Department, but overall only about 2.6 percent of spousal or fiancee claims are rejected.

Separately, the data show some 4,749 minor spouses or fiancees received green cards to live in the U.S. over that same 10-year period.

The head of USCIS, L. Francis Cissna, said in a letter to the committee that its request had raised questions and discussion within the agency on what it can do to prevent forced minor marriages. The agency noticed some issues in how the data was collected and has resolved them. Officials also created a flagging system that requires verification of the birthdate whenever a minor is detected.

The country where most requests came from was Mexico, followed by Pakistan, Jordan, the Dominican Republic and Yemen. Middle Eastern nationals had the highest percentage of overall approved petitions.

HENRY COUNTY — One person died in an accident just 4p.m. Friday in Henry County.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a Mercury passenger vehicle driven by Deann M. Phillips, 53, Urich, was northbound on 297 NW 7 Highway at Clinton. The driver lost control in the snow and traveled into the path of a 2019 semi driven by Zackery Gardiner, 33, Lansing, KS.

Phillips and a passenger Olivia Phillips, 14, Urich, were pronounced dead at the scene. Gardiner was not injured.

All three were properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Shawnee County District Attorney Mike Kagay says a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper was justified in fatally shooting a man whose vehicle was dragging the trooper and a Topeka police officer through the snow.

Kagay says the trooper won’t be charged in the death of 35-year-old Jarmane Logan in November.

The trooper and police officer were trying to take Chelsee Retana into custody when she and another woman got into Logan’s vehicle in Topeka. Investigators say Logan was driving away with the women while dragging the officer and trooper.

Investigators say the trooper shot Logan when he refused to stop the vehicle .

Retana is charged with interference with law enforcement and possession of methamphetamine and two misdemeanors. The other woman hasn’t been charged.