Topeka, Kan. – Kansas’ new chief justice plans to push for changes aimed at helping veterans and the mentally ill and expects to press for a budget increase from a GOP-controlled Legislature that’s likely to remain sharply critical of the state Supreme Court.

Chief Justice Marla Luckert became the Kansas court system’s top official – and the second woman to hold the job – upon former Chief Justice Lawton Nuss’ recent retirement. Her promotion came a day after Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly made her first appointment to the seven-member court, and Kelly is set to make another by mid-March.

Luckert, 64, said during an Associated Press interview that she wants to expand special courts to handle criminal cases involving veterans, drug offenders and the mentally ill to focus on treating their underlying problems.

Legislators and other court watchers don’t expect a philosophical shift in the high court, which in recent years forced lawmakers to boost spending on public schools and ruled in April in favor of abortion rights. For many Republicans, that’s a bad thing, and they’re pursuing changes to overturn the court on abortion and allow legislators to block governors’ appointments of new justices.

Tension is likely to remain with the filing of a lawsuit Dec. 20 by six trial court judges against the Legislature, arguing that lawmakers have violated the state constitution by chronically underfunding the judiciary. It even prompted Luckert on Dec. 23 to cancel the State of the Judiciary address planned for Jan. 15 over concerns that the speech, which often touches on budget needs, might violate ethics rules against judges commenting on pending cases or speaking with a lawsuit’s parties outside the courtroom.

Luckert said before the lawsuit’s filing that she has been troubled by public attacks on the court, which have grown more frequent and harsher since she became a justice.

“Our job really is to be that stopgap where sometimes popular opinion conflicts with our constitutional rights,” she said. “It seems that there is a sort of inability to move past that and to engage in constructive conversation at times, but I don’t think it has to be that way.”

Luckert was appointed to the Kansas Supreme Court in January 2003 by moderate Republican Gov. Bill Graves after serving as a district judge in Shawnee County for 11 years.

She sees expanding special courts as crucial. Kansas has two dozen specialty courts in 17 of its 105 counties.

“Other states are seeing incredible results,” Luckert said.