By CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN

Tenure, as Kansas public school teachers had known it for decades, died at the hands of lawmakers without a hearing in the spring of 2014.

No one disputes that.

This week, state and teachers union lawyers went head-to-head before the Kansas Supreme Court over whether the slaying of those long-standing job protections ran afoul of the state and U.S. constitutions.

“This was run through,” union lawyer David Schauner told the justices, “without any regard for whether anybody whose property was being taken would have an opportunity to respond before it was a fait accompli.”

A small school district defending its 2015 firing of two veteran teachers — with backing from a state attorney — argued that’s irrelevant because legislators have the power to change the law.

If the justices find for the Kansas National Education Association, thousands or even tens of thousands of teachers who had earned tenure before the 2014 change could get their job protections back. If the ruling goes the other way, it will be the KNEA’s second failed attempt to upend the tenure repeal in court.

Before 2014, Kansas public school teachers earned tenure — formally called non-probationary status — in their fourth year at a single school district. If a district didn’t like a teacher’s work, administrators could prevent tenure by letting them go before the fourth year.

And if administrators wanted to fire a teacher after that, they had to give the reasons. Tenured teachers had the right to defend themselves against any allegations by presenting witnesses or documents to an independent hearing officer.

The union’s fight to win those protections back hinges on the idea that tenure is property — and that government can’t take people’s property without giving them notice and a chance to object.

Not true in this case, said Ed Keeley, a lawyer for the Flinthills school district near Wichita. Keeley said tenure was just a provision in state law, not the constitution — the House and Senate voting to change it is sufficient.

“We elect these legislators to make those decisions,” Keeley said.

He was skeptical lawmakers needed to do anything more — such as tell the public in advance.

“Do they have to publish it in a paper? I mean what notice are we talking about?” he said. “We have to send out emails to everybody on a list?”

But Schauner called the 2014 repeal “a midnight raid” on people’s property with little room for lawmakers to dissent.

The tenure change was part of a school funding bill. The House amended it without hearings in either chamber, and Schauner argued lawmakers could hardly vote down the bill because it contained money to fulfill a court order in a high-stakes school finance lawsuit.

Schauner faced tough questions from the justices about whether that matters. After all, it’s not uncommon to makes changes to law that didn’t pass through public hearings first. Schauner argued the bar is higher here.

“What was being taken was, in the case of my two clients, their livelihood,” he said.

It’s unclear how many teachers had tenure when the legislature ended it in 2014. Neither the KNEA nor the state education department kept count.

The Kansas Association of School Boards has said it was too difficult sometimes to remove bad teachers who had tenure.

Charles Walther, a social studies teacher at Shawnee Heights Middle School, disagreed. Walther said tenure lets teachers take unpopular stances — such as making a child repeat a grade — without fear of an unfair firing that could ruin their job prospects elsewhere.

“In this business, if you don’t have your reputation you don’t have much,” said the KNEA member and teacher of 22 years.

Celia Llopis-Jepsen is a reporter for the Kansas News Service You can reach her on Twitter @Celia_LJ.

GRETNA, La. (AP) — The man who killed NFL running back Joe McKnight in a December 2016 road-rage confrontation was found guilty of manslaughter Friday by a jury in suburban New Orleans.

Jurors began deliberations Friday afternoon in the case of Ronald Gasser, 56. Manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of 40 years.

Defense attorneys had claimed Gasser feared for his life when he fired from his driver’s seat at McKnight, who was standing at his open passenger-side window.

Police said the death had followed a 5-mile (8-kilometer) rolling confrontation that began with dangerously aggressive driving on a New Orleans bridge and ended with McKnight being shot as he stood outside Gasser’s car at a suburban intersection.

Prosecutors didn’t deny that McKnight drove dangerously before he was killed. “We do not dispute that he was driving like a jerk,” Assistant District Attorney Seth Shute told jurors in closing arguments, alluding to witness testimony that McKnight weaved in and out of traffic, cutting Gasser and others off, at high speed.

But Shute said Gasser escalated the danger, taking McKnight’s driving as a challenge. “Mr. Gasser thought that Mr. McKnight had thrown the gauntlet down,” Shute told jurors, later adding, “He followed him off the exit. That was not his exit.”

Shute acknowledged that McKnight had a hand on the open, passenger side window of Gasser’s car before he was shot. But he said physical evidence proved Gasser lied during extensive police questioning when he claimed McKnight lunged at him. He cited the lack of gun powder on McKnight’s body as evidence that McKnight wasn’t close to Gasser. “Joe McKnight was not lunging,” he added, citing autopsy results. “There would be a hole in his deltoid muscle if he was.”

Defense lawyer Matthew Goetz said Gasser wasn’t pursuing McKnight down the exit that day but simply taking an alternate route to his nearby home, having been distracted by McKnight.

Gasser did not seek a confrontation at the traffic light where McKnight exited his own vehicle and walked up to Gasser’s passenger window. Louisiana law allows the use of lethal force by someone who believes someone entering his or her home or car is a threat. “What do you think he was doing when he went to the window, inviting him to tea?”

McKnight was considered the No. 1 running back recruit in the country when he came out of John Curtis Christian School in Louisiana in 2006. He signed with the University of Southern California, where he ran for 2,213 yards and 13 touchdowns and caught 66 passes for 542 yards and two scores in three seasons.

In the NFL, he played three seasons for the New York Jets and one with the Kansas City Chiefs. He spent a season in the Canadian Football League, playing two games for the Edmonton Eskimos and three for the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

He was shot Dec. 1, 2016. Gasser never left the shooting scene and was initially freed after more than eight hours of questioning.

Gasser’s release sparked protests at the time, and some said race played a role in his release — Gasser is white and McKnight was black. Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand, who has since retired, angrily denied that race played any role in the case and said a thorough investigation led to the arrest. Prosecutors later recounted a painstaking effort including an extensive search for witnesses and physical evidence that eventually led to Gasser being charged.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Supreme Court has upheld the conviction and sentence of a woman in the brutal killing of a 52-year-old Lawrence man.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports the state court on Friday upheld 23-year-old Sarah Gonzales-McLinn’s conviction and Hard 50 sentence for killing Harold Sasko in 2014. The court sent the case back to Douglas County District Court for re-sentencing, saying the judge erred in ordering that she be under lifetime supervision upon release.

Gonzales-McLinn, of Topeka, was convicted of first-degree murder in March 2015 of drugging and nearly beheading Sasko at his Lawrence home. Authorities say McLinn drugged Sasko, tied him up and inflicted deep cuts on his neck. She was arrested two weeks after the killing in Florida.

Sasko was Gonzales-McLinn’s supervisor at a Lawrence pizza restaurant.