Opinion on bathroom law. Healthcare in prisons. Judicial branch pay. Redistricting frenzy. Outbreaks at sea.

By Sherman Smith | editor-in-chief

TOPEKA — A few spaces are exempt from Kansas’ new bathroom law that requires people to use the facilities in government buildings that match their sex assigned at birth, Attorney General Kris Kobach said in an opinion he released Wednesday.

Kobach’s opinion, which carries no legal authority, exempted some government spaces — such as skilled nursing rooms at the Kansas Office of Veterans’ Services — from complying with the bathroom law that went into effect in February.

He issued the opinion in response to an April letter from Justin Whitten, Gov. Laura Kelly’s chief counsel, who asked for clarification on defining “multiple-occupancy private spaces” and “facilities” as written in Senate Bill 244.

TOPEKA — The Kansas Department of Corrections signed a two-year contract with a private healthcare company based in Topeka to provide medical services for 10,000 inmates at the state’s eight adult prisons and the Kansas Juvenile Correctional Complex.

The deal with VitalCore Health Strategies would obligate the state to pay $88.9 million in the initial fiscal year starting July 1, state Department of Corrections officials said. The contract could be lengthened twice under separate two-year extensions. The annual cost escalator would be 3.5% for the life of the contract — an increase of $3 million in the second year of the deal. The pact would run through June 30, 2032, if the maximum of six years were authorized.

TOPEKA — Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Rosen says internal budget reallocation allows for a 1% salary increase among non-judicial employees to match raises granted by the Legislature for state employees in the executive branch.

The Legislature adjourned the 2026 session without appropriating money to elevate salaries of the state’s 2,000 judicial branch employees. At the end of the annual session, the Legislature did vote to finance the across-the-board salary enhancement for executive branch staff. Each House and Senate member received an automatic 4.4% boost in compensation, while lawmakers agreed to provide other legislative branch employees a generous 10% raise.

In the past two years, a dozen states have either approved new U.S. House maps or are moving toward doing so — a highly unusual mid-decade revamp prompted by President Donald Trump and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling late last month. And the situation isn’t settled yet — even as ballots are being printed and early voting is already underway in some places. Pending litigation could scramble the situation even further.

By Katrine Wallace

Cruise ships are convenient floating hotels by which to see far-flung parts of the world — but as an epidemiologist, I know they are also everything an infectious pathogen could want: thousands of strangers packed into enclosed spaces for days or weeks, sharing dining rooms and high-touch surfaces such as elevator buttons and handrails, breathing recirculated air.

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