Would You Pay Money to Learn Law from this Bozo?

Kris Kobach, darling of the Kansas right-wingers and Congressional loser in a district heavily slanted his way, is a professor at UMKC School of Law. What kind of credibility will he have left, now that the Kansas Court of Appeals has tossed him out of court for a reason a first-year law student would have foreseen, and perhaps prevented?

In a nutshell, Kobach and assorted other anti-immigrant nutcases filed a lawsuit challenging a duly-passed law allowing qualified alien students to receive in-state tuition rates in Kansas schools. The students must be "undocumented immigrants who attend Kansas high schools for three years and obtain either high school diplomas or state-issued GEDs. The students must sign affidavits saying they plan to apply or are applying for U.S. citizenship." Kobach sued on behalf of some out-of-state students who felt that they should also be entitled to in-state rates.

The Kansas Court of Appeals told Kobach and his clients to quit whining, because they could show no harm that they suffered. As first-year law students know, the Courts aren't there to give you a forum to bitch and moan about stuff that doesn't really matter to you. You have to show that you have "standing" - that the law impacts you.

What must have Kobach really red-faced, and his employers at UMKC wondering "Who hired this bonehead?", is the fact that he wasted so much time and effort on a lawsuit even his worst student could have told him was a bunch of nonsense. His supposedly conservative supporters should be criticizing him for wasting tax dollars incurred in defending this frivolous suit, as well.

(In a sidenote, though, the funniest quotation arising out of this whole debacle was from Dan Stein, the numbnuts who heads the organization that actually sponsored this waste of time. "Dan Stein, federation president, called the judge’s decision an 'appalling exercise in judicial activism, taking a blatantly illegal state law and using various procedural obstacles to keep these young people from having their day in court.'" Judicial activism?? I know that's a favorite phrase of the right wing, but, here, your complaint is that the court refused to engage in judicial activism. Are you stupid or dishonest? You're clearly one or the other.)