NEWSFLASH: Supreme Court Says “No” to Kansas Abortion-Rights Foe

It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving fellow.

Phill Kline, the former attorney general of Kansas, won’t be getting back his license to practice law for at least three years, thanks to a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court upheld, without comment, the decision made last fall by the Kansas Supreme Court to indefinitely suspend Kline’s law license because he had violated 11 rules of professional conduct while serving as attorney general and then Johnson County district attorney. The conduct arose from his obsessive investigation of abortion clinics and his mishandling of a grand jury proceeding.

The anti-choice Kline had subjected the late abortion provider Dr. George Tiller and a Planned Parenthood clinic in Overland Park to a politically motivated inquisition in which he alleged that Dr. Tiller had performed illegal abortions and failed to report the sexual abuse of minors who had sought abortions. Despite filing more than 100 criminal charges, Kline lost in his efforts to stop Dr. Tiller’s work, as a jury found Tiller not guilty of all charges. The charges against Planned Parenthood were also dismissed or dropped.

Then the tables were turned, and Kline faced substantiated charges of mishandling patient medical records, misleading the court, misrepresenting the law, disobeying a court order and providing false testimony.

Photo of Phill Kline from Wikimedia Commons

 

 

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