The Kansas Legislature is the
state legislature of the
U.S. state
In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...
of
Kansas
Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the ...
. It is a
bicameral
Bicameralism is a type of legislature, one divided into two separate assemblies, chambers, or houses, known as a bicameral legislature. Bicameralism is distinguished from unicameralism, in which all members deliberate and vote as a single grou ...
assembly, composed of the
lower
Lower may refer to:
*Lower (surname)
*Lower Township, New Jersey
*Lower Receiver (firearms)
*Lower Wick Gloucestershire, England
See also
*Nizhny
Nizhny (russian: Ни́жний; masculine), Nizhnyaya (; feminine), or Nizhneye (russian: Ни́ ...
Kansas House of Representatives
The Kansas House of Representatives is the lower house of the legislature of the U.S. state of Kansas. Composed of 125 state representatives from districts with roughly equal populations of at least 19,000, its members are responsible for craftin ...
, with 125 state representatives, and the
upper Kansas Senate
The Kansas Senate is the upper house of the Kansas Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. State of Kansas. It is composed of 40 senators elected from single-member districts, each with a population of at least 60,000 inhabitants. Members ...
, with 40 state senators. Representatives are elected for two-year terms, senators for four-year terms.
Prior to statehood, separate pro-slavery and anti-slavery territorial legislatures emerged, drafting four separate constitutions, until one was finally ratified and Kansas became a state in 1861.
Republicans hold a long-standing
supermajority
A supermajority, supra-majority, qualified majority, or special majority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of more than one-half used for a simple majority. Supermajority ru ...
in both houses of the state legislature, despite a short-lived dominance by the Populist Party. The state legislature approved one of the first child labor laws in the nation.
Composed of 165 state lawmakers, the state legislature meets at the
Kansas State Capitol
The Kansas State Capitol, known also as the Kansas Statehouse, is the building housing the executive and legislative branches of government for the U.S. state of Kansas. Located in the city of Topeka, which has served as the capital of Kansas sin ...
in
Topeka
Topeka ( ; Kansa: ; iow, Dópikˀe, script=Latn or ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the seat of Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, in northeast Kansas, in the Central Uni ...
once a year in regular session. Additional special sessions can be called by the
governor
A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...
.
History
Pre-statehood
![Planned Lecompton, Kansas state capitol](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Planned_Lecompton%2C_Kansas_state_capitol.jpg)
The
Kansas Territory
The Territory of Kansas was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 30, 1854, until January 29, 1861, when the eastern portion of the territory was admitted to the United States, Union as the Slave and ...
was created out of the
Kansas–Nebraska Act
The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 () was a territorial organic act that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It was drafted by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas, passed by the 33rd United States Congress, and signed into law by ...
in 1854. In several of the provisions of the act, the law allowed the settlers of the newly created territory to determine, by vote, whether Kansas, once
statehood was achieved, would be entered as either a
free or a
slave state
In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were legal, while a free state was one in which they were not. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave states ...
.
[Goodrich, Thomas. ''War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas, 1854–1861'' (2004)] The act created a rush of both
abolitionist
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people.
The British ...
Northern and pro-slavery Southern immigrants to the territory, hoping that strength through numbers would place Kansas in their camp. Animosities between the newly arrived sides quickly turned into open violence and guerrilla warfare, giving name to this period known as
Bleeding Kansas
Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas, or the Border War was a series of violent civil confrontations in Kansas Territory, and to a lesser extent in western Missouri, between 1854 and 1859. It emerged from a political and ideological debate over the ...
.
During Kansas' first elections for a territorial government on March 30, 1855, nearly 5,000
Missouri
Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...
men, led by United States Senator
David Rice Atchison
David Rice Atchison (August 11, 1807January 26, 1886) was a mid-19th century Democratic United States Senator from Missouri. He served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate for six years. Atchison served as a major general in ...
and other prominent pro-slavery Missourians, entered the territory, took over the polling places, and elected pro-slavery candidates. The elections resulted in 13 pro-slavery members of the upper house of the territorial legislature and one free-state member, who resigned. The lower house ended up with 25 pro-slavery members and one free-state member.
[ Free-Staters immediately cried foul, naming the new Kansas Territorial Legislature the Bogus Legislature.] After meeting for one week in Pawnee Pawnee initially refers to a Native American people and its language:
* Pawnee people
* Pawnee language
Pawnee is also the name of several places in the United States:
* Pawnee, Illinois
* Pawnee, Kansas
* Pawnee, Missouri
* Pawnee City, Nebraska
* ...
at the direction of Territorial Governor Andrew Reeder
Andrew Horatio Reeder (July 12, 1807 – July 5, 1864) was the first governor of the Territory of Kansas.
Biography
Reeder was born in Easton, Pennsylvania to Absolom Reeder and Christina (Smith) Reeder. He was educated at an academy in Law ...
, the thirty-eight pro-slavery legislators reconvened at the Shawnee Manual Labor School between July 16 and August 30, 1855,[ and began crafting over a thousand pages of laws aimed at making Kansas a slave state.
Free-Staters convened their own unauthorized shadow legislature and territorial government in ]Topeka
Topeka ( ; Kansa: ; iow, Dópikˀe, script=Latn or ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the seat of Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, in northeast Kansas, in the Central Uni ...
, crafting their own Topeka Constitution
The Topeka Constitutional Convention met from October 23 to November 11, 1855 in Topeka, Kansas Territory, in a building afterwards called Constitution Hall. It drafted the Topeka Constitution, which banned slavery in Kansas, though it would also ...
in late 1855. While the document was debated and submitted to a vote in the territory, it was never accepted by Congress. The pro-slavery territorial legislature's response to the Free-Staters and growing violence was the Lecompton Constitution
The Lecompton Constitution (1859) was the second of four proposed constitutions for the state of Kansas. Named for the city of Lecompton where it was drafted, it was strongly pro-slavery. It never went into effect.
History Purpose
The Lecompton C ...
in 1857. Due to an electoral boycott by abolitionist groups and the questions regarding the validity of the legislature itself, it never officially became law.
While the Lecompton Constitution was debated, new elections for the territorial legislature in 1857 gave the Free-Staters a majority government, caused in part by a boycott by pro-slavery groups. With this new mandate, the legislature convened to write the Leavenworth Constitution The Leavenworth Constitution was one of four Kansas state constitutions proposed during the era of Bleeding Kansas. It was never adopted. The Leavenworth Constitution was drafted by a convention of Free-Staters, and was the most progressive of the ...
, a radically progressive document for the Victorian era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...
in its wording of rights for women and African-Americans
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...
. The constitution was adopted in 1858, though it too suffered the same fate as previous documents when Congress refused to ratify it.
Following the Leavenworth Constitution's defeat, the territorial legislature again crafted a new document the following year, dubbed the Wyandotte Constitution The Wyandotte Constitution is the constitution of the U.S. state of Kansas.
Background
The Kansas Territory was created in 1854. The largest issue by far in territorial Kansas was whether slavery was to be permitted or prohibited; aside from the m ...
. A compromise of sorts, it outlawed slavery in the territory, while removing progressive sections on Native Americans, women, and blacks. The territorial legislature passed the document, and submitted it to public referendum. It was ratified by the Kansas electorate on October 4, 1859.
Statehood to present
Southern senators blocked the admission of Kansas as a free state, which would have added to the number of free state senators. When they withdrew after seven states seceded, in January of 1861, Kansas's admission as a free state, effective January 29, was approved within hours. On February 8, the Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States or the Confederacy was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confeder ...
was formed.
The first Kansas impeachments occurred in 1862, brought about in part by Republican Party infighting in the state.[Ewing, Cortez A. M.]
Early Kansas Impeachments
" Kansas Historical Quarterly, August 1932 (Vol. 1, No. 4), p. 307-325, digitized with permission of the Kansas Historical Society. (accessed July 25, 2013)
The election of state officers under the Wyandotte Constitution took place in December 1859, but because of the delay in approving Kansas's statehood, they did not take their positions until February 1861. The lapse of time created a constitutional question as to the expiration of the two-year terms for which Governor Charles L. Robinson
Charles Lawrence Robinson (July 21, 1818 – August 17, 1894) was an American politician who served in the California State Assembly from 1851-52, and later as the first Governor of Kansas from 1861 until 1863. He was also the first governor o ...
and the chief administrative officers were elected, with Robinson's opponents calling for a November 1861 election. Robinson refused to permit the canvassing of votes for the offices in the 1861 election and his position was upheld by the Kansas Supreme Court.
The state legislature brought impeachment trials against the governor, Kansas Secretary of State J. W. Robinson and State Auditor George S. Hillyer, over what they believed to be the unlawful sale of state bonds to help raise Union troops. They were convicted of selling state bonds in direct violation of the laws of the state, but found innocent of conspiracy and other articles of impeachment. Only three state senators voted to impeach the governor, who was less directly involved in the sale of the bonds.
In 1867, a constitutional amendment was sent to voters to allow women to vote, but failed.[Women's Suffrage](_blank)
Kansapedia
Kansas Historical Society
November 2001 (accessed July 25, 2013)
State offices began to move from the Old Constitutional Hall to the east wing of the Kansas State Capitol
The Kansas State Capitol, known also as the Kansas Statehouse, is the building housing the executive and legislative branches of government for the U.S. state of Kansas. Located in the city of Topeka, which has served as the capital of Kansas sin ...
in 1869, which was still undergoing construction.[Kansas State Capitol](_blank)
Kansapedia
Kansas Historical Society
2004. (accessed July 25, 2013) The state legislature first met there in 1870, though the east wing was not completed until 1873. Work would continue on the building until March 24, 1903.
On February 19, 1881, Kansas became the first state to amend its constitution to prohibit all alcoholic beverages.[Bader, Robert Smith. ''Prohibition in Kansas: A History'' (1986)] This action was spawned by the temperance movement
The temperance movement is a social movement promoting temperance or complete abstinence from consumption of alcoholic beverages. Participants in the movement typically criticize alcohol intoxication or promote teetotalism, and its leaders emph ...
, and was enforced by the ax-toting Carrie Nation
Caroline Amelia Nation (November 25, 1846June 9, 1911), often referred to by Carrie, Carry Nation, Carrie A. Nation, or Hatchet Granny, was a radical member of the temperance movement, which opposed alcohol before the advent of Prohibition. Nat ...
beginning in 1888. After 1890, prohibition was joined with progressivism to create a reform movement. Kansas did not repeal prohibition until 1948, and even then it continued to prohibit public bars until 1987.
The Populist Party was a significant third party movement in Kansas during the 1890s and peaked in the fall elections of 1892, when the ticket won the governor's office, four congressional seats, and control of the Kansas Senate
The Kansas Senate is the upper house of the Kansas Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. State of Kansas. It is composed of 40 senators elected from single-member districts, each with a population of at least 60,000 inhabitants. Members ...
.[Cool Things - Legislative War Artifacts](_blank)
Kansapedia
Kansas Historical Society
November 1997. (accessed July 25, 2013) Populists and Republicans both claimed control of the Kansas House of Representatives
The Kansas House of Representatives is the lower house of the legislature of the U.S. state of Kansas. Composed of 125 state representatives from districts with roughly equal populations of at least 19,000, its members are responsible for craftin ...
, with the Populists accusing the Republican Party of election fraud. The dispute resulted in separate Populist-led and Republican-led Houses in 1893 that at first shared the chamber but later met in separate locations in the Kansas State Capitol after the Republican-led House took control of the chamber on February 15, 1893. The Kansas Supreme Court
The Kansas Supreme Court is the highest judicial authority in the state of Kansas. Composed of seven justices, led by Chief Justice Marla Luckert, the court supervises the legal profession, administers the judicial branch, and serves as the st ...
eventually sided with the Republicans and the Populist-led House disbanded.
The state legislature was a leader in child labor reform, enacting a law in 1905 to restrict children under 14 from working in factories, meatpacking houses, or mines.
Kansas was a center of the progressive movement
Progressivism holds that it is possible to improve human societies through political action. As a political movement, progressivism seeks to advance the human condition through social reform based on purported advancements in science, techno ...
, with support from the middle classes, editors such as William Allen White
William Allen White (February 10, 1868 – January 29, 1944) was an American newspaper editor, politician, author, and leader of the Progressive movement. Between 1896 and his death, White became a spokesman for middle America.
At a 193 ...
of the ''Emporia Gazette'', and the prohibitionists. With the help of progressive state legislators, women gained the right to vote through a constitutional amendment approved by Kansans on November 5, 1912.
Between 1922 and 1927, there were several legal battles between Kansas and the Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...
, resulting in their expulsion from the state.
The Kansas Legislature adopted the flag of Kansas
The flag of the state of Kansas was adopted in 1927. The elements of the state flag include the Kansas state seal and a sunflower. This original design was modified in 1961 to add the name of the state at the bottom of the flag.
Official descri ...
in 1927.
Since 1966, the legislature holds annual general sessions. Previously, the session in odd-numbered years was of unlimited duration while in even-numbered years the session was limited to 60 calendar days (unless two-thirds of the elected members of each house voted to extend it). A constitutional amendment adopted at the 1974 general election extended the duration of the session held in the even-numbered years to 90 calendar days, still subject to extension by a vote of two-thirds of the elected membership of each house."Kansas Legislative Research Manual Kansas Legislative Procedures,"
March 12, 2009.
Legislative procedure
The Kansas Legislature is composed of 165 part-time legislators, meeting normally once a year. Meetings begin in January and usually will last for a period of 90 days. The governor of Kansas retains the power to call a special legislative session if needed.
Bills
A proposed law is introduced in the state legislature as a bill
Bill(s) may refer to:
Common meanings
* Banknote, paper cash (especially in the United States)
* Bill (law), a proposed law put before a legislature
* Invoice, commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer
* Bill, a bird or animal's beak
Plac ...
. There are seven basic steps to the life of a bill: the introduction, standing committee action, a vote by the Committee of the Whole, floor passage, action by the second house, action by the governor and publication of the law.[Legislative Procedure in Kansas](_blank)
Kansas Legislative Research Department, November 2006. (accessed July 24, 2013)
When a bill is introduced its title is read, it is printed and distributed to members of the house of origin, and it is referred to a standing committee
A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly. A committee is not itself considered to be a form of assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to explore them more ...
. Standing committee chairs decide whether or not to hear a bill and members of the committee can submit amendments to the bill. After consideration and discussion, the committee votes on whether or not to send a committee report to the Committee of the Whole. While under consideration by the Committee of the Whole, amendments can be submitted by state legislators in the house of origin. The final action in the house of origin is a vote by the full membership.
Bills go through an identical process in the opposite house of the state legislature. After passage by both houses, a bill is submitted to the governor, who either signs it into law or veto
A veto is a legal power to unilaterally stop an official action. In the most typical case, a president or monarch vetoes a bill to stop it from becoming law. In many countries, veto powers are established in the country's constitution. Veto ...
es it. If vetoed, the bill only becomes law if both houses of the legislature vote to override the veto with a two-thirds majority of their membership.
References
External links
The Kansas Legislature
Kansas Legislative Procedure Manual
Kansas House and Senate Journals, 1913-1955 (KGI Online Library)
Kansas Oral History Project
{{Authority control
Bicameral legislatures
1861 establishments in Kansas