Kansas Territorial Legislature

Kansas Legislature
Type
Type	Bicameral
Houses	Kansas Senate Kansas House of Representatives
Leadership
President of the Senate	Susan Wagle, R Since January 14, 2013
Senate Majority Leader	Jim Denning, R Since January 9, 2017
Speaker of the House	Ron Ryckman Jr., R Since January 9, 2017
House Majority Leader	Don Hineman, R Since January 9, 2017
Structure
Seats	165
Senate political groups	Republican: 32 Democratic: 8
House political groups	Republican: 97 Democratic: 28
Authority	Kansas Constitution
Elections
Senate last election	November 8, 2016
House last election	November 8, 2016
Senate next election	November 9, 2021
House next election	November 12, 2018
Meeting place
Kansas State Capitol, Topeka

The Kansas Legislature is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Kansas. It is a bicameral assembly, composed of the lower Kansas House of Representatives, with 125 state representatives, and the upper Kansas Senate, with 40 state senators.

Prior to statehood, separate pro-slavery and anti-slavery territorial legislatures emerged, drafting four separate constitutions, until one was finally ratified and Kansas became a state in 1861. Republicans hold a long-standing supermajority in both houses of the state legislature, despite a short-lived dominance by the Populist Party. The state legislature approved one of the first child labor laws in the nation.

Composed of 165 state lawmakers, the state legislature meets at the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka once a year in regular session. Additional special sessions can be called by the governor of Kansas.

The Kansas Territory was created out of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. In several of the provisions of the act, the law allowed the settlers of the newly created territory to determine, by vote, whether Kansas, once statehood was achieved, would be entered as either a free or a slave state. The act created a rush of both abolitionist Northern and pro-slavery Southern immigrants to the territory, hoping that strength through numbers would place Kansas in their camp. Animosities between the newly arrived sides quickly turned into open violence and guerrilla warfare, giving name to this period known as Bleeding Kansas.