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The Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Max Kautsch is an attorney whose practice focuses on First Amendment rights and open government law.

Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden doesnt want you to know anything, other than what he reveals, about what the local media is calling a months-long, taxpayer-funded probe into unfounded allegations of election fraud in Johnson County.

First, to reiterate the facts about the 2020 election: Countless officials and scholars have repeatedly affirmed that there was no evidence of voter fraud playing a role in Donald Trumps loss. According to Johnson County election officials earlier this year, we have not seen any evidence of fraud and believe the allegations without proof are not in the best interest of our county.

In what one would think would be the last word on the subject in this state, Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab recently explained that in each of the over 300 audits his office has conducted since 2019, which involve hand counting a precinct and it matches what you tabulated after election, I mean where are you finding fraud? Youre finding accusations, but the math shows that the elections are secure.

Even so, polling suggests that up to 70% of Republicans still believe that Joe Biden was not elected legitimately.

That a majority of the Republican Party appears willing to ignore the facts is one thing. But its quite another for a Republican sheriff to spend taxpayer dollars on a monthslong probe that has resulted in no arrests, call it a criminal investigation and keep secret the records documenting those expenditures.

The public became aware of the probe only because Hayden openly discussed it with groups such as the Northeast Johnson County Conservatives at an event in the Kansas City area in February and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association at that organizations conference last month in Las Vegas. There, Hayden led a panel titled 2000 Mules: Law Enforcement Has To Step In At This Point. Will Sheriffs Investigate?

But when a local media outlet requested records related to the probe under the Kansas Open Records Act, including the receipts for taxpayer funds to pay for it, Hayden denied the request in its entirety, claiming that the requested records were created as part of a criminal investigation.

To be sure, KORA allows law enforcement agencies to withhold records compiled in the process of preventing, detecting or investigating violations of criminal law.

But despite a bevy of election crimes already on the books, Hayden has yet to say which of those laws he thinks were violated, let alone identify suspected violators. And other than statements about the probe he has made as an invited speaker, public information is mostly limited to his July 19 news release and news conference that same day where he defended the probe primarily on the basis that his office has received 200 tips.

That news conference was on the heels of the 2000 Mules conference, where Hayden claimed, without evidence, that his office has a whole lot of reasonable suspicion and were starting to develop some probable cause.

Less than two weeks after Haydens news conference, Schwab pushed back, indicating to a local TV station during an interview late last month that its unlikely Hayden received 200 complaints based off the fact that Schwabs office got about 12. Schwab told the station that Haydens probe was justifiable only if hes got evidence, and that theres got to be probable cause and right now, thats not what were seeing.

Schwab underscores the purpose of an investigation: to make arrests. To support an arrest for a violation of Kansas law, a law enforcement agency must be able to show probable cause that the alleged crime has been committed.

The Kansas Supreme Court has defined probable cause in part as the reasonable belief that a specific crime has been or is being committed.

Reaching that threshold requires collecting evidence. Law enforcement agencies conduct investigations to collect evidence of criminal activity.

But as Schwab has made clear, there simply is no evidence of specific criminal activity for Haydens election integrity probe to collect. The best Hayden seems to be able to do to imply that he reasonably believes fraud occurred because the 2020 presidential election was the first time since 1914 that Johnson County didnt vote for the Republican nominee.

Thats not an investigative lead. Thats wistful thinking.

But perhaps of even greater concern is that Haydens use of KORA may set a harmful precedent whereby a law enforcement agency could designate any activity it chooses as a criminal investigation, regardless of whether such activity is reasonably likely to lead to the arrest of any suspect. That keeps the public in the dark about questionable expenditures of taxpayer dollars on the activity.

If Hayden persists in keeping records of public expenditures away from the taxpayers on the basis that his probe is a criminal investigation, the Legislature should consider amending KORA to ensure that an agency may withhold such records only if the investigation is likely to lead to the arrest of a suspect.

Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary,here.

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Johnson County sheriffs stonewalling on election probe keeps Kansans in the dark - Kansas Reflector

Before 1985, there was a media concept that attempted to balance the news that was aired to the general public. It was called the Fairness Doctrine, and it was initiated in 1949 by the Federal Communications Commission during the earlier days of television newscasting.

There was a concern in 1949 when there were only three major broadcast networks, NBC, ABC and CBS that a tendency to bias might occur in their news presentations. The FCC created a doctrine that required any news program that had a license to broadcast to the public to present both sides of any and all controversial issues important to that general audience and its agenda.

In 1969, the Fairness Doctrine was challenged, and without going into the details (check the Ronald Reagan Library website, which describes the case), it went to the Supreme Court who upheld it in a unanimous decision. It was during the Reagan administration in 1987 that the FCC decided to abolish the doctrine because it was feared that it would hurt the public interest and potentially violate the First Amendment rights of free speech.

Its hard to see how First Amendment concerns would apply (and, back then, the Supreme Court agreed), since both sides would have the opportunity to express their views of events in the news, or other issues presented to the public, and in no way a violation of free speech would be evident. When the doctrine was abolished, it, of course, opened the licensed broadcast doors to the news eventually becoming, to many, a hopelessly one-sided and often deeply biased affair.

The Fairness Doctrine was created with broadcast licensing, and the scarcity of the broadcast spectrum, in mind. In its original design, it could not apply to cable news, satellite service providers or the internet. But what if it could? What if the current administration, or any administration for that matter, would direct the FCC to revisit its doctrine of 1949 and explore the potential good that could be accomplished with a modern-day reinstatement of the fairness policy? Suddenly everyone who exclusively tunes into Fox News for their information on current issues of importance would see other reputable newscasters offering the other side of the story. Of course, the same would apply to MSNBC and all broadcast and cable news networks.

Once viewers got a more balanced view of potentially deeply polarizing issues, they would certainly become better informed in their decision making, and perhaps that polarization may be slightly reduced on both sides. Even if that reduction were small, it would be a step in the right direction, a step toward healing the growing schism between differing biases in the news.

Maybe, as an experiment, lets bring back the Fairness Doctrine for one year and see if it can make a difference. I have tried to imagine a serious downside to this experiment and continue to come up short. After all, the Supreme Court supported it and that should be remembered. In a court of law, both sides must be heard by the jury. If they only heard the prosecutors side, I suspect that all would be found guilty or found innocent if they only heard the defenses presentation. Lets be fair!

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Maine Voices: What if the balance demanded by the Fairness Doctrine could exist today? - Press Herald

Imagine an America where you are not permitted to exercise your First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression, where efforts to define and be yourself are policed by or prohibited by a government that is watching your every move an America defined by undemocratic government mandate. In a growing number of states, trans youth are faced with this harrowing scenario simply for being who they are. Florida has taken these efforts to restrict freedom of speech and expression to new extremes, with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) leading the charge.

Through administrative changes by DeSantis, the state of Florida recently issued a direct attack on transgender youth with the publication of dangerous new guidance designed to restrict the ability of children to define and express themselves. This guidance, which stands in direct opposition to best-practice child development principles, has been issued in the wake of a vague Dont Say Gay law that will result in trans kids being outed in schools, perhaps their one safe space. This is the latest attack by conservatives against marginalized people, and they are laser-focused not only on restricting access to life-saving gender-affirming medical care, but also on controlling how trans and gender-diverse people exist in the world.

Meanwhile, DeSantis prepares his own likely presidential run and is showing the nation what his campaign may look like.

Make no mistake: DeSantis unilateral decree, issued without substantial input from Floridas legislature or residents, is an attack on freedom and liberty. He is attempting to prevent American citizens from being able to use their own names, express their own inner selves and exercise their fundamental right to freedom of speech. While this guidance and the law are cloaked in the language of restricting social transition or speaking about gender identity, they are very much an attempt to bar children from expressing themselves.

Social transition is a process where transgender and gender-diverse individuals adopt the name, pronouns and gender expression of their identified gender. This process is not clinical in nature but a choice that someone makes in a community with others. When this transition begins, it allows individuals to begin to express themselves publicly and be embraced for who they are by those around them. This can be lifesaving for many trans kids, as it allows them to express their inner self better and grow and develop as the person they know themselves to be.

Conservatives claim that social transition is part of some liberal agenda or fad, when in reality it is simply part of the process of normal human growth and development something the GOP is in clear opposition to.

As a health care provider, I have seen many kids grow up healthy and happy after society got their names, pronouns and clothes right. They knew, while others had to catch up. I recall one little transgender girl who just had to go to Disneyland as a princess after this, she went to school as the girl she always was and flourished. I remember a little transgender boy who knew he was a boy since age 4 and after being accepted for who he was, he lived a life that would have been expected of any other boy his age.

Preventing social transition interferes with the healthy process of trans and gender-diverse kids growing up as their whole authentic selves. It is not a fad. Social transition has positive outcomes for kids, families and communities meanwhile denying children this opportunity is not only cruel, harmful and discriminatory, but it directly contradicts the position of every major medical, nursing or health care society in the United States.

A driving force behind the anti-trans legislation, policies and guidance being proposed by social conservatives is the misguided belief that there are too many LGBTQ+ kids. Instead of accepting that the world has changed and ideas around gender have expanded as more people have felt comfortable coming out and identifying as LGBTQ, social conservatives have responded by championing a dangerous agenda that censors ideas, cracks down on social expression and puts vulnerable children in the crosshairs of grotesque political attacks.

Whats happening in Florida is an example of government overreach at its most dangerous, as it exploits its authority in an unscientific and malicious way to dictate what is considered appropriate medical care and even further, what is an appropriate way for individuals to speak, dress, act and express themselves.

These recent moves by the state of Florida and DeSantis should be concerning to all Americans who believe in freedom of speech and expression. DeSantis will likely be a presidential contender, and this unilateral executive action clearly shows what type of future he and his campaign appear to want for America: one that is destructive to individual liberty and freedom of expression and one which harms those at the margins.

We must speak up and fight back.

Dallas Ducar, NP, is the chief executive officer of Transhealth Northampton. Follow Ducar on Twitter and Instagram: @DallasDucar

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How Gov. Ron DeSantis is attacking the freedom and liberty of all Americans - The Hill

WASHINGTON

A civil rights lawsuit filed by a University of Washington computer science professor has called attention to a largely academic debate over land acknowledgments formal statements that recognize Indigenous custodianship of geographic areas on which institutions stand or events take place.

Evolving out of the work of Canadas Truth and Reconciliation Commission, land acknowledgments are becoming increasingly common at U.S. universities and sporting events.

Yale University, for example, developed this statement:

Yale University acknowledges that indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.

Native American students at Stanford University in Stanford, California, put together a video statement acknowledging the institution's location on the the ancestral land of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe (below):

In 2020, the University of Washington acknowledged its location on the traditional land and waterways of the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot Nations and encouraged faculty to include land acknowledgments on individual course syllabuses.

But Stuart Reges, a computer science professor at the University's Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, opposes land acknowledgements and posted a dissenting statement on his course outline which read, I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.

He now faces disciplinary action by the university for that statement. In his lawsuit, Reges alleged his First Amendment right to free speech had been violated.

The labor theory he cites was proposed by English philosopher John Locke in 1690, who suggested that by laboring and making the land more productive than it was in its original state of nature, an individual assumes the right to own that land.

Locke said that in the case of land, if you grew corn on an acre of land, then by mixing your labor with the land, you come to own the land, Reges told VOA. So, if you believe in the Locke idea, then it wasn't Native tribes that made productive use of this land. It was the people who founded the university.

What is the Locke Theory of Property?

For help in understanding this little-known theory, VOA reached out to Kyle Swan, a professor of philosophy at California State University, Sacramento, who has written about Lockean property rights.

I think he [Reges] is making some mistakes in the way he applies Lockes theory, he said. Locke was talking about the commons, earth in its original state, when nobody owned anything yet.

In a later chapter of his Second Treatise of Government titled On Conquest, Locke said property could only be legitimately acquired when it was not already owned by someone else.

Why were they making contracts to acquire land from the natives if the natives didn't already own the land? Swan asked. They wouldn't do that if they believed that the lands were unused, unoccupied and unowned.

The second thing is that the person appropriating something from the commons, they have to do that in a way that improves it through their productive activity gathering berries, hunting, fishing, Swan said. And finally, in acquiring the land, they have to leave enough and as good [land] for others.

Locke also posed a condition in cases of conquest, said Swan, reading directly from Lockes essay: The inhabitants of any country, who are descended and derive a title to their estates from those who are subdued and had a government forced upon them against their free consents, retain a right to the possession of their ancestors.

In other words, Swan said, if what you have is a conquest rather than a legitimate transfer of territorial rights, then Locke says that the original inhabitants retain their claims to it.

Their different interpretations of Locke notwithstanding, Swan said he believed Reges had the right to exercise free speech.

Ties to current politics

Reges said he believes land acknowledgments support a particular view of American history that has no place in the classroom.

You could call it the Howard Zinn view of history that the United States is evil, and we stole the land, we are guilty, and so forth, he said.

Zinn was a controversial historian and author of A Peoples History of the United States, which re-examined history through the experiences of those normally neglected in textbooks African and Native Americans, immigrants and the working classes.

Critics condemn Zinn as a Marxist trying to turn Americans against their country. His name often comes up in discussions about critical race theory (CRT).

Reges isnt alone in his views. In a July 18 article in Newsweek magazine University of Chicago Law School professor M. Todd Henderson called land acknowledgments ahistorical nonsense, and like Reges, invokes Lockes theory of property rights.

No one has a claim on land except if they put it to productive use and are capable of defending it. Nearly every plot of land on Earth is inhabited today by groups of people that displaced other people who lived there before, Henderson said.

Graeme Wood, a writer for the Atlantic and a lecturer at Yale, criticizes land acknowledgments as superficial and showy.

The acknowledgments never include any actual material redress the return of land, meaningful corrections of wrongs against Indigenous communities or sophisticated moral reckoning, he wrote.

A Native American perspective

Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee), president of the Morning Star Institute and former executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, scoffs at these criticisms.

People who enjoy their privilege are like sea anemones. At the slightest ripple in the water, they withdraw and turn into something that looks like a very carefully protected stone, she said. Every time Native peoples began to own something or control something or aspire to or even just be in a certain place, theres always a backlash against any sort of exercise of our treaties, our sovereignty, our inherent rights, our original rights that pre-date everyone else's here in this hemisphere.

She pointed out that opponents of land acknowledgments and CRT say they want to save their children from feeling guilt.

What we're doing different people of color is trying to stop our kids from thinking badly of themselves. Thats what happens if you're treated badly, if you're treated like second-class citizens, even though you have treaties, even though you have absolute rights and you're constantly denied them. Pretty soon, their kids start thinking it's them, that they are the bad persons.

So, yeah, she added. We are trying to save our kids.

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Examining the Debate Over Native American Land Acknowledgments - Voice of America - VOA News

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Floyd County to consider 'First Amendment auditor' training Tuesday; SPLOST work also on the agenda - Northwest Georgia News