Story by Jason Alatidd, Topeka Capital-Journal
The Kansas Supreme Court has sided with voter advocacy groups in a lawsuit against Secretary of State Scott Schwab and Attorney General Kris Kobach challenging the legality of an election law enacted by the Republican-controlled Legislature over the veto of Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.
Justice Caleb Stegall, the high court’s most conservative member, wrote the unanimous opinion released Friday.
“Today we hold that when the Legislature criminalizes speech and does not — within the elements of the crime — provide a high degree of specificity and clarity demonstrating that the only speech being criminalized is constitutionally unprotected speech, the law is sufficiently unclear to confer pre-enforcement standing on a plaintiff challenging the law,” Stegall wrote.
The matter was one of two argued before the Supreme Court this year stemming from the same case brought by the League of Women Voters of Kansas, Loud Light, Kansas Appleseed Center for Law and Justice and the Topeka Independent Living Resource Center.
Friday’s ruling addressed the dispute over a provision of House Bill 2183 that makes it a felony crime to impersonate an election official.
The voter advocacy groups sued in Shawnee County District Court, arguing in part that they feared the law criminalized voter registration drives. But Judge Teresa Watson denied their request for a temporary injunction, and a divided panel of the Kansas Court of Appeals upheld Watson’s ruling…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE…(msn.com)
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