Derek Schmidt

Derek Larkin Schmidt (born January 23, 1968) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the Kansas Attorney General from 2011 to 2023.

Schmidt graduated from the University of Kansas with a bachelor's degree in 1990, received a master's degree in international politics from the University of Leicester in England, and received his J.D. degree from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Schmidt was then a legislative assistant to Republican U.S. Senator Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas, an assistant Kansas attorney general and special counsel to Governor Bill Graves.

Schmidt was elected to the Kansas Senate in 2000.

A Republican, Schmidt was first elected to office serving in the Kansas Senate, where he represented the 15th district from 2001 to 2011, and served as Agriculture Committee chairman and Senate majority leader.

In 2004, Schmidt was elected the Senate majority leader, holding this post through 2010.

During his time in the Kansas Senate, Schmidt sponsored an unsuccessful proposal to repeal the state's ban on for-profit prisons.

Schmidt was a supporter of the highly popular Kansas version of Jessica's Law, but "almost single-handedly killed the final bill by demanding inclusion of a provision allowing private prisons in Kansas" as the town of Yates Center, in Schmidt's district, sought to bring a private prison to the town.

According to OpenSecrets, top contributors to Schmidt's campaigns included the Community Bankers Association, AT&T, the Kansas Association of Realtors, the Kansas Optometric Association, Cox Enterprises, Koch Industries, Monsanto, the Kansas Wine & Spirits Wholesalers Association, the Associated General Contractors of Kansas, Sunflower Electric Power Corporation, and Sprint.

Schmidt was the Republican nominee for Kansas Attorney General, defeating Ralph DeZago in the Republican primary election on August 3, 2010.

One of Schmidt's first acts as state attorney general was to add Kansas as a plaintiff to the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 in Florida v. United States Department of Health and Human Services; in a letter, Schmidt wrote that the ACA's individual mandate would "encroach on the sovereignty of the State of Kansas and on the rights of our citizens."

Schmidt became the state attorney general in 2011, after he defeated incumbent Democrat Stephen Six.

Schmidt was the Republican nominee for governor of Kansas in the 2022 election, which he won the primary but lost to incumbent Democrat Laura Kelly in the general.

He won the general election against the incumbent, Democrat Steve Six and took office on January 10, 2011.

A key issue in Schmidt's first campaign for attorney general was the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the health care reform law.

Six chose not to join 25 other states in challenging the constitutionality of the ACA, while Schmidt pledged to join the lawsuit challenging the law, if elected.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012), ultimately upheld most of the ACA as constitutional, while striking down a portion of the law which would have required states to implement Medicaid expansion.

Schmidt won re-election in 2014, defeating Democratic nominee A.J. Kotich, a labor lawyer and former chief attorney for the Kansas Department of Labor.

In 2014, after the chief district judge of Johnson County (the most populous county in the state) ordered the state to issue licenses to same-sex couples, Schmidt filed a petition in the Kansas Supreme Court and obtained a temporary halt to the issuance of licenses to same-sex couples pending a hearing.

However, in November 2014, a federal district judge ordered the state to allow same-sex couples to marry.

Schmidt petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to block the order, but the Court denied his request.

Kansas challenged Obama-era regulations on the oil and gas industry, including a regulation controlling emissions of the greenhouse gas methane; in 2015, Schmidt also joined Kansas in a suit challenging the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan.

In 2015, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, Schmidt dropped his Kansas Supreme Court case against same-sex marriage.

In the latter case, the Supreme Court issued in 2016 a stay of implementation in a 5–4 decision along ideological lines.

In July 2017, Schmidt joined a group of eight other Republican state attorneys general, led by Ken Paxton of Texas, as well as Idaho Governor Butch Otter, in sending a letter to President Donald Trump saying that they would litigate if Trump did not terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy that had been put into place by the Obama administration.

(One of the signatories, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III, subsequently reversed his position and urged passage of the DREAM Act.)

Schmidt defended Kansas in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, seeking to invalidate Kansas's ban on same-sex marriage and its prohibition of allowing same-sex couples to change the names on state drivers' licenses to reflect their married names, receive spousal health benefits, or file joint state tax returns.

In 2018, Schmidt defeated Democratic nominee Sarah G. Swain, winning election to a third term.

In April 2020, Democratic governor Laura Kelly instituted orders to restrict the rapid spread of COVID-19 that limited public gatherings to a maximum of ten persons.

As this would have applied to Easter Sunday celebrations in churches, the Republican-majority Legislative Coordinating Council reversed her order.

Republican Schmidt also opposed Kelly's order, contending that it violated the Kansas Constitution and Kansas law.

He issued a memo calling the order likely unconstitutional and urged law enforcement not to enforce it.

Of the first eleven loci of contagion in Kansas, three had already been traced to religious gatherings.

The Kansas Supreme Court reinstated Kelly's orders on April 11, in expedited proceedings.

A week later, in a separate case, U.S. District Judge John W. Broomes in Wichita issued a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of Kelly's order as to two churches (one in Junction City, the other in Dodge City), where the plaintiffs contended that the restriction violated religious freedom and free speech rights.

That case became moot after Governor Kelly issued a new executive order with less restrictive COVID-19 rules effective on May 4, 2020, under an agreement that allowed the churches to hold larger in-person services but required social distancing.

Schmidt and Republican officials acted to countermand the governor's orders concerning wearing masks and social distancing.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that Kansas counties that had passed mask mandates experienced 500 fewer COVID-19 deaths than would have otherwise been expected in the absence of such restrictions.

As attorney general, Schmidt joined with other Republican state attorneys general in challenging federal regulatory actions adopted by the Obama administration that Schmidt contended were illegal federal overreach.

Schmidt and his colleagues were successful in blocking many of these regulations, particularly those proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.