TOPEKA – As a federal appeals court prepares to hear arguments June 8 in a 26-state lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the federal health care law, Kansas has joined a second legal effort to overturn the statute.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt joined with 13 other states to file a brief recently in the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals outlining constitutional objections to the so-called “individual mandate” provision in the health care law. Kansas is not a party to this second lawsuit but is backing the position of the plaintiffs who are challenging the law. The second case is Seven-Sky v. Holder.

Earlier this year, Kansas joined as one of 26 state plaintiffs in a separate federal lawsuit in Florida challenging the law’s constitutionality. The state plaintiffs prevailed in the district court, and that case is now on appeal in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Oral arguments are scheduled for June 8 in Atlanta.

“A federal government that can order individual Americans to actively engage in commerce and then regulate their behavior under authority of the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution would be a federal government whose power, scope and reach are truly unlimited,” Schmidt said. “The issue in this litigation is liberty, not health care. Kansas will remain an active participant in efforts to persuade the courts to find enforceable constitutional limits on the scope and reach of the federal government.”

To date, five federal district courts have ruled on the constitutionality of the federal law. Three have upheld it; two have struck it down. Two federal circuit courts of appeals have recently heard oral arguments on challenges to the law but have yet to issue a ruling. Schmidt said he remains hopeful that the issue eventually will reach the U.S. Supreme Court and that the Supreme Court will find limits on the power granted to the federal government by the Commerce Clause.

“Our founders did not intend to create a federal government with an unlimited, general police power,” Schmidt said. “Rather, they intended to create a federal government of limited, enumerated powers with all other powers reserved to the states or to the people. This litigation is testing whether that carefully crafted framework still endures.”

(AP) – Combines have begun rolling over the first fields of winter wheat in south central Kansas.

Early reports show good quality crops with decent test weights and protein levels even, though yields are expected to be down amid drought conditions. Farmers typically cut their best fields first.

Justin Gilpin at Kansas Wheat said Monday the wheat is so far along that within a week harvest activity will have begun as far north as Salina and out as far west as Hays.

The OK Co-op elevator in Kiowa has received about 30 percent of the crop with test weights averaging 62 pounds a bushel. At the Farmers Co-op in Wellington test weights are coming in at 61 to 63 pounds per bushel.

Today: Sunny and hot, with a high near 103. Breezy, with a south southwest wind 10 to 13 mph increasing to between 18 and 21 mph.

Tonight: Partly cloudy, with a low around 65. Breezy, with a south wind between 15 and 20 mph.