Two members of the Kansas attorney general's staff who were finalists for a previous appointment and four lower-court judges are seeking to fill a vacancy on the state Supreme Court.

A lawyer-led state nominating commission is scheduled to interview 17 candidates for the high court Jan. 16 and 17. The commission will name three finalists for Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly to consider, and she will have until March 17 to pick one.

The vacancy was created by former Supreme Court Chief Justice Lawton Nuss' retirement last week. The next senior justice, Marla Luckert, became chief justice.

It will be Kelly's second appointment to the seven-member court within three months. Last week, the governor appointed Shawnee County District Judge Evelyn Wilson to replace retired Justice Lee Johnson.

The two finalists for that spot were Deputy Attorney General Dennis Depew and Assistant Solicitor General Steven Obermeier.



Court: Airline’s workers can’t sue as class in pay dispute

American Airlines workers at Newark’s airport who claim in a lawsuit they’ve been shorted on overtime pay can’t sue as a class, a federal appeals court ruled this week.

The three-judge panel’s decision published Tuesday reversed a New Jersey judge’s ruling that would have allowed the lawsuit to go forward and include all non-exempt hourly workers employed at Newark Liberty International Airport since April 2014.

Several employees, including mechanics and workers responsible for tasks such as cargo handling, filed the suit in 2016 and said American’s timekeeping system automatically paid employees based on their schedules rather than on the hours they actually worked.

They also alleged managers regularly refused to authorize overtime pay for work performed before and after scheduled shifts and during scheduled 30-minute lunch breaks. The lawsuit sought back pay as well as punitive damages. American denied the allegations.

The appeals court sided with the airline, which argued that while the timekeeping system applied to all employees, it would be wrong to group all employees into a class because it would have to be determined on a case-by-case basis which employees worked overtime.