Kansas lawmakers earned a “Tort Reform Trailblazer” designation in the American Tort Reform Association’s 2026 Legislative HeatCheck report, after achieving one of the country’s strongest civil justice reform slates this year.
“Kansas lawmakers showed real resolve this year and refused to back down,” said Lauren Sheets Jarrell, ATRA’s vice president and counsel for civil justice policy. “They passed reforms that make the state’s courts fairer and more predictable, and when the governor vetoed two of them, the legislature overrode her vetoes with decisive supermajorities.”
The Legislature enacted three major civil justice reforms this session: a law reining in abuse of the state’s public nuisance law, a law tightening how local governments hire outside contingency-fee lawyers, and a law raising the bar for the expert evidence juries can hear. Gov. Laura Kelly signed the expert evidence bill but vetoed the other two; lawmakers overrode both vetoes.
Senate Bill 462 creates a crucial courtroom stopgap, preventing public nuisance law — originally meant to protect the public’s right to use shared resources like roads and waterways — from being abused and expanded into an all-purpose litigation weapon, creating unlimited liability for everyday products. The law makes clear that manufacturing and sellinglegalproducts cannot give rise to public nuisance lawsuits. Gov. Kelly originally vetoed the bill but legislators overrode that veto by 86-37 in the House and 30-9 in the Senate.
“Public nuisance law was written to stop local disturbances, not to hand trial lawyers a blank check to sue any industry they don’t like,” Sheets Jarrell said. “This law returns public nuisance claims back to their original purpose and gives Kansas businesses a predictable set of rules to follow.”
HB 2593 brings transparency to how cities, counties and school boards hire outside lawyers, requiring an open, public meeting before signing a contingency-fee contract. It further requires the state attorney general to review and approve the contract before it takes effect. Gov. Kelly also vetoed this bill, but the House voted 85-38 and the Senate 27-12 to override that veto.
“Taxpayers deserve to know when their local government hands a lawsuit over to a contingency-fee law firm, and as the state’s top law enforcement officer, the attorney general should have a say before that happens,” Sheets Jarrell said. “This law makes sure outside lawyers can’t launch massive lawsuits against Kansas industries without state-level accountability.”
The last major civil justice reform bill out of Kansas of this year is SB 398, which aligns Kansas’s expert evidence rules with the federal courts’ Rule of Evidence 702. Aligning with Rule 702 gives judges stronger tools to keep “junk science” from reaching a jury. Lawyers must now prove to a judge that an expert’s opinion is based on solid facts, uses a reliable method, and applies that method correctly to the facts of the case before the jury hears a word of it — and judges must weigh whether the expert’s conclusion actually follows from the method, not just whether the right steps were followed. Kelly signed the bill April 7.
“Credentials alone shouldn’t get an expert witness in front of a jury,” Sheets Jarrell said. “This law makes sure Kansas judges have the tools to keep unreliable testimony out of the courtroom before it can produce an unjust verdict.”
Recent data shows that excessive litigation costs Kansas families nearly $5,680 a year in a “tort tax” for a family of four, or $1,419 per person. ATRA’s report notes that’s enough to buy 111 orders of Joe’s Kansas City sliced brisket, or refill a family’s gas tank more than 100 times. Excessive tort costs also contribute to the loss of 35,447 jobs and $4.2 billion in economic output statewide each year, along with $219.5 million in lost state government revenue.
Kansas joins New Mexico and Wisconsin as ATRA’s 2026 “Tort Reform Trailblazers” in its latest Legislative HeatCheck. The full Legislative HeatCheck report is available at heatcheck.atra.org.
