Kansas AG, speaking at GOP panel in Alaska, says he plans to sue the governor again
From left, former Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor, South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, West Virginia Attorney General J.B. McCuskey and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill appear at an Aug. 28, 2025, panel during the annual Alaska Oil and Gas Association conference in Anchorage. (James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
TOPEKA — Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach plans to sue Gov. Laura Kelly, he said during a panel with Republican attorneys general in Alaska last week, but he did not specify what for.
While weighing in on the pros and cons of electing state attorneys general or appointing them, Kobach reasoned that the elected system is the better method because the attorney general is then accountable to the people and can exercise checks and balances.
“In Kansas right now, we have a supermajority Republican Legislature,” Kobach said in a recording obtained by Alaska Beacon, which is affiliated with Kansas Reflector through States Newsroom. “We have a Democrat governor, and we have a Republican attorney general, and I have had to sue our governor once, and I’m about to sue her again.”
“It’s not been released yet, and it’ll be in the next few weeks,” Kobach said, which was met with laughter from the audience.
He added: “So if you have a situation like that, where you have a governor who wants to be Biden-like or Obama-like and is not following the law, you need an attorney general of the Republican stripe to take that governor to (court) and enforce them to obey the law.”
Kobach did not specify what the lawsuit would entail, and the attorney general’s office did not respond to a Kansas Reflector request for comment. The governor’s office declined to comment.
Kelly and Kobach have a partisan public history, dating to the 2018 gubernatorial race in which Kelly beat Kobach in a five-way contest with 48% of the votes.
In July, the governor joined 22 states and Washington, D.C., in a lawsuit against the Trump administration for the adverse effects of federal funding losses. By mid-August, Kobach submitted a court filing asking the federal court in Massachusetts to boot Kelly from the suit because only attorneys general can sue on behalf of a state, he argued.
As chair of the Democratic Governors’ Association, Kelly has been an outspoken opponent of the Trump administration’s actions. Most recently, she and other Democratic governors penned a statement warning President Donald Trump against deploying the National Guard in other states, as he did in Washington.
Kelly administration officials have also repeatedly denied a Trump administration mandate to turn over Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, data, resulting in Kobach claiming during an August legislative meeting that he has a team of attorneys analyzing whether the denials are legal.
Last week’s panel was a paid event in Anchorage hosted by the Anchorage Republican Women’s Club to foster a conversation among attorneys general from Alaska, Texas, Kansas, South Dakota, West Virginia and Louisiana. It followed an attorney general conference in Girdwood, a resort town southwest of Anchorage, focused on cybersecurity. Kobach was one of 11 attorneys general in attendance from both red and blue states, including the host, Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor, a Republican who subsequently resigned as attorney general and stepped down as chair of the Attorney General Alliance.
“The great content that we have, and the things we learn and share with each other, that’s the key,” Taylor said in a statement posted to Facebook. “I love the bipartisan nature of this group. I love the family aspect of this group. Our children get to know each other and play with each other while we’re all in our meetings, learning.”
The attorneys general on the panel discussed elections, citizenship, business, education and parents’ rights, property rights, homelessness, abortion medication, and law and order.
When asked about what kind of role attorneys general ought to play in ensuring fair, secure and transparent elections, Kobach, who was the Kansas Secretary of State from 2011-2019, pointed to major pending cases across the country.
“One of them is whether states can require proof of citizenship,” he said. “It is so easy to vote in the United States because it’s a system based entirely on trust.”
Kobach lost a court battle over a state law he wrote that required proof of citizenship to register to vote. He was unable to prove his claims of voter fraud, and a federal judge struck down the law as unconstitutional and held Kobach in contempt.
Along with Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who also sat on the panel, Kobach sued the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Commerce earlier this year over the inclusion of noncitizens and temporary citizens in the calculation of electoral college votes and congressional seats. The states argue that those calculations go against the 14th Amendment.
“The Trump administration agrees with us on that question, but we know that the battle is not easily won,” Kobch said, “because as soon as the Trump administration agrees, then the blue states will come in and fight against us.”
Kobach also appeared on a panel on Aug. 28 at the Alaska Oil and Gas Association annual conference, where he promoted Kansas as one of the early challengers of Title IX rules during the Biden administration. He also described the threat of “left-wing anti-energy litigators” that are “convincing county commissions and city councils to go to court against the oil industry.”
“So the reason I’m so energized about fighting back against that is Ford County, Kansas, which you probably never heard of,” he said.
A group of Kansas citizens and Ford County sued plastic, oil and chemical companies in 2024, arguing that the companies lied for decades about the recyclability of plastic, creating a pollution crisis.
Kobach blamed the lawsuit on litigators from California, purporting to represent all U.S. citizens.
“My office is chasing them around, trying to get them kicked out of court because they don’t speak for the people of Kansas,” he said.
Kobach added: “They can’t use the Biden administration, but they can find lots of gullible or left-leaning cities and states to do their dirty work.”
James Brooks of the Alaska Beacon contributed reporting to this story.