,,,Constitutional Rights in Kansas After Hodes & Nauser

In Hodes & Nauser, MDs, P.A. v. Schmidt,1 the Kansas Supreme Court held that section 1 of the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights protects a woman’s fundamental right “to make her own decisions regarding her body, health, family formation, and family life—decisions that can include whether to continue a pregnancy.”2 For the most part, reactions to this long-awaited and controversial decision fell along predictable lines, with pro-choice advocates hailing the decision as an important advancement for women’s reproductive freedoms, and right to life advocates condemning the decision and vowing to reverse it by state constitutional amendment.3 In this Article, I will leave those important but intractable debates to one side and focus on a more practical question: What are the implications of Hodes & Nauser for the interpretation and application of constitutional rights in Kansas? The central premise of this Article is that Hodes & Nauser decouples Kansas individual rights doctrine from the United States Supreme Court’s constitutional rights jurisprudence, with significant implications not only for abortion rights but also for many other constitutional rights.4 When