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© Thad Allton/Topeka Capital-Journal/Associated Press
A GOP law on judicial appointments has been thrown out, and now it's the judiciary itself that hangs in the balance

What began as merely a fiscal mess in Kansas has become a full-blown judicial crisis.

On Wednesday, a district court ruled against the state, and threw out a 2014 law passed by Republicans that took the power of appointing chief judges away from the Kansas Supreme Court and handed it to local judges. But that rather simple question of judicial administration could have further-reaching consequences, thanks to a provision in a second law passed by the legislature earlier this spring that would cut off funding for the state's entire court system, if the 2014 law was struck down.

Kansas officials were so worried about the consequences of the court's decision that the state's attorney general, Derek Schmidt, successfully filed to have the ruling stayed until the courts rule on an appeal and the validity of the 2015 law.
My immediate concern ... is that the court does not appear to have decided the validity of a 'nonseverability' clause contained in a later statute, which means today's decision could effectively and immediately shut off all funding for the judicial branch of state government.

It is critical to keep the state judiciary operating.
We've previously covered Kansas's financial struggles, as a Republican experiment in conservative economic policy failed spectacularly, leaving the state deeply in the red. The fiscal crisis divided and, for a time, paralyzed the GOP-controlled legislature before lawmakers reluctantly agreed to nearly $400 million in sales taxes earlier this year.

The current dispute flows from the budget battle: Ever since the state Supreme Court in 2014 ordered the legislature to increase funding for education, Governor Sam Brownback and his allies in Topeka have sought to wrest power over appointments from the Supreme Court and make it easier to replace judges. (A majority of the justices on the high court were appointed by Brownback's Democratic predecessor, Kathleen Sebelius.)

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