State v. Sims (Kan. 2026): Noncompliance with a Supreme Court Remand-Filing Order Can Forfeit Review and Leave an Adverse Prejudice Finding Intact

1. Introduction

State v. Sims, No. 114,959 (Kan. Aug. 14, 2026), arises from Terrance Isaiah Sims’ three convictions for failing to pay the Kansas Offender Registration Act (KORA) registration fee under K.S.A. 2018 Supp. 22-4905[l]. Sims’ original appellate theory attacked the fee-and-criminal-penalty scheme on substantive due process grounds, contending the statutory arrangement served no legitimate governmental interest. After the Court of Appeals rejected that claim, the case took an unusual procedural path in this court: a retained-jurisdiction remand for prejudice findings tied to ineffective assistance of counsel.

The central issues ultimately addressed in the 2026 decision are less about KORA’s merits than about appellate process and institutional authority: (1) what follows when the Supreme Court issues a specific remand directive requiring the parties to file the district court’s remand decision within a set time, and (2) how the court should resolve a case when a majority agrees on the outcome (reversal) but not on a single rationale.

2. Summary of the Opinion

The court reversed the Court of Appeals and the district court judgments, thereby reversing Sims’ three convictions. Five justices participated; all five agreed the convictions must be reversed, satisfying the Kansas constitutional voting requirement.

But the justices split on the path to reversal:

  • Chief Justice Rosen, joined by Justice Biles, would reverse because the State failed to comply with this court’s prior order to file the district court’s remand decision within 30 days. In their view, that failure foreclosed further review of the district court’s adverse prejudice finding, leaving in place the combination of (a) this court’s earlier deficient-performance determination and (b) the district court’s prejudice finding—requiring reversal.
  • Justice Stegall, joined by Justices Wall and Walsh, concurred in the result but emphasized the underlying constitutional concern: criminal felony liability for failing to pay a $20 administrative fee is likely so arbitrary and unreasonable that it may fail rational-basis review and exceed the Legislature’s police power. This was framed as a likely facial substantive due process defect, though the concurrence acknowledged the case did not yield a majority holding on that constitutional question.

3. Analysis

3.1. Precedents Cited

A. Prior posture and retained-jurisdiction remands

  • State v. Sims, No. 114,959, 2019 WL 1087363 (Kan. 2019) (unpublished opinion): This earlier decision is the procedural engine for the 2026 outcome. A majority previously found appellate counsel deficient for not timely pursuing a procedural due process/indigency theory (raised later via Rule 6.09 letter). The court retained jurisdiction and remanded solely for a prejudice determination, ordering the parties to file the district court’s remand decision within 30 days. The 2026 opinions treat that filing directive as pivotal: Rosen/Biles regard it as a practical substitute for ordinary appellate triggers, while Stegall/Wall/Walsh view the detour as having delayed resolution of the merits.
  • State v. Wright, 307 Kan. 449, 410 P.3d 893 (2018): Cited for the standard practice following fact-finding remands when the parties comply—i.e., the appellate court “simply resume[s]” analysis upon receipt of findings. Rosen uses Wright to highlight the contrast: the mechanism works only if the parties do what they were ordered to do.

B. Appellate procedure, preservation, and forfeiture/foreclosure concepts

  • K.S.A. 60-2103 and Cooke v. Gillespie, 285 Kan. 748, 176 P.3d 144 (2008): Rosen’s concurrence analogizes the State’s failure to comply with the Supreme Court’s remand-filing directive to missing a notice-of-appeal deadline. Cooke is used for the proposition that failure to timely file can prevent appellate review, supplying the conceptual template for “foreclosure” here.
  • Pretty Prairie Wind LLC v. Reno County, 62 Kan. App. 2d 429, 517 P.3d 135 (2022): Cited for nuance in when appellate notices are required—particularly where a party challenges reasoning rather than the judgment already on appeal. Rosen uses it to frame (and limit) the analogy: Sims is procedurally atypical, so the court’s explicit remand instruction becomes the key procedural anchor.
  • K.S.A. 60-206 and In re Bell, 317 Kan. 334, 529 P.3d 153 (2023): Rosen relies on K.S.A. 60-206 to compute the 30-day deadline (excluding the Sunday) and uses In re Bell to clarify the deadline passed before COVID-era administrative suspensions, removing any plausible pandemic-based excuse for the multi-year delay.

C. Substantive due process, police power, and rational basis authorities

  • State v. Genson, 316 Kan. 130, 513 P.3d 1192 (2022) (quoting State v. Hall, 287 Kan. 139, 195 P.3d 220 (2008) and Creecy v. Kansas Dept. of Revenue, 310 Kan. 454, 447 P.3d 959 (2019)): Stegall uses this line to distinguish substantive from procedural due process and to situate the challenge as a restraint on arbitrary state action. Genson is also invoked for the classic formulation that police-power legislation cannot be “unequal, unreasonable or oppressive” and must bear a reasonable relation to legitimate objectives.
  • Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997) and United States v. Skrmetti, 605 U.S. 495 (2025): These provide the federal “black letter” rational-basis framing: every law must be rationally related to a legitimate interest, and classifications survive if any reasonably conceivable facts could justify them. Stegall uses these to measure KORA’s felony penalty for nonpayment of a small fee.
  • Delight Wholesale Co. v. City of Overland Park, 203 Kan. 99, 453 P.2d 82 (1969), Junction City, 226 Kan. at 534-35 (as quoted in Ingham), City of Baxter Springs v. Bryant, 226 Kan. 383, 598 P.2d 1051 (1979), and State v. Ingham, 308 Kan. 1466, 430 P.3d 931 (2018): These Kansas cases and quotations anchor the “reasonableness” limitation on police power. They reinforce Stegall’s thesis that punishment grossly disproportionate to the asserted “evil” may be constitutionally suspect even under deferential review.
  • Dissmeyer v. State, 292 Kan. 37, 249 P.3d 444 (2011), Thompson v. KFB Ins. Co., 252 Kan. 1010, 850 P.2d 773 (1993), Henry v. Bauder, 213 Kan. 751, 518 P.2d 362 (1974), and Joseph v. Henderson, 834 So. 2d 373 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2003): These are marshaled by Stegall to illustrate circumstances where courts have found (or suggested) rational-basis failure due to arbitrariness, discrimination, or mismatch between means and ends—including Joseph’s analogous $20 booking fee constitutional problem.

3.2. Legal Reasoning

A. The court’s institutional constraint: agreement on judgment, not rationale

The per curiam opinion foregrounds an important structural point: Kansas requires “the concurrence of a majority of the justices sitting and of not fewer than four justices” for a decision (Kan. Const. art. 3, § 2). With only five participating justices, unanimity on the disposition (reversal) is decisive for the judgment, even though no single constitutional or procedural rationale commands a majority of the full court in a way that clearly settles the underlying KORA question.

B. Rosen/Biles: remand-filing noncompliance as a bar to reviewing prejudice

Rosen frames the case as an “outside the normal appellate procedure” matter. Because the court retained jurisdiction and issued an explicit directive—file the remand decision within 30 days—Rosen treats compliance as functionally necessary to revive Supreme Court review after remand.

When the district court found prejudice (an adverse result to the State) and the State did nothing for years, Rosen would treat further merits review of that prejudice determination as foreclosed. The logic is pragmatic and supervisory: appellate review depends on procedural steps, and when the Supreme Court itself supplies those steps for an atypical remand, ignoring them has consequences similar to missing an appeal deadline.

C. Stegall/Wall/Walsh: the substantive due process/police power mismatch

Stegall’s concurrence argues the case should have been resolved earlier by addressing Sims’ original argument directly: that imposing strict criminal liability— potentially felony imprisonment—for failure to pay a $20 administrative fee is “unreasonable, arbitrary,” and not rationally related to a legitimate state interest.

While acknowledging the concurrence does not create a definitive holding on facial unconstitutionality, it sketches a road map for future challenges: identify the asserted governmental “evil” (public safety), then explain why incarcerating someone who did report and register but did not pay a small fee does not reasonably advance that objective. The concurrence emphasizes that “police power” cannot be a label that validates any legislative choice; the choice must still be plausibly connected to the stated purpose in a non-oppressive way.

3.3. Impact

A. Procedural impact: compliance with Supreme Court remand instructions

Rosen/Biles’ approach—if adopted in later cases—signals that parties must treat remand-filing directives as jurisdictionally meaningful gatekeeping in retained-jurisdiction remands. Practically, prosecutors and defense counsel alike should expect that:

  • failure to file remand results on time may forfeit the opportunity to contest them, and
  • the Supreme Court may decline to “re-open” issues if the parties ignore explicit supervisory instructions.

B. Substantive impact: vulnerability of felony sanctions for small administrative fees

Although Stegall’s constitutional analysis is not a majority holding, it is a detailed invitation to litigants to press rational-basis/police-power arguments against extreme criminalization of minor administrative nonpayment—especially where the person otherwise complies with the public-safety core of the regulatory scheme. Future KORA fee prosecutions (and analogous fee-based felonies) may face intensified scrutiny, at least at the level of demanding a coherent “means–ends” explanation.

C. Institutional impact: fragmented decisions and limited precedential clarity

The decision reverses Sims’ convictions but leaves the constitutionality of K.S.A. 2018 Supp. 22-4905[l] unresolved as a binding statewide rule. As a result, lower courts and litigants may treat the case as:

  • a strong procedural warning (especially under Rosen/Biles’ framework), and
  • a substantive signal (under Stegall’s framework) without a definitive holding.

4. Complex Concepts Simplified

  • Substantive vs. procedural due process: Substantive due process asks whether the law itself is arbitrary or irrational; procedural due process asks whether the government provided fair procedures before depriving liberty or property (e.g., adequate notice and opportunity to be heard).
  • Rational basis review: The most deferential constitutional test. A law generally stands if it is rationally related to any legitimate government interest, even if the fit is imperfect. Stegall’s point is that some penalties can be so disconnected from purpose that they become irrational even under this forgiving standard.
  • Police power: The state’s broad authority to legislate for health, safety, and welfare. Kansas cases cited emphasize that this power is not unlimited: measures must be reasonable and not oppressive.
  • Facial challenge: An argument that a statute is unconstitutional in all (or nearly all) applications—not just as applied to one defendant.
  • Retained jurisdiction remand: An appellate court sends a narrow issue back to the district court (here, prejudice) but keeps the appeal “open” rather than ending it and requiring a new appeal.
  • Plurality vs. majority: A plurality is the largest group supporting a rationale but not enough for a majority. Here, the court had a unanimous judgment to reverse among the five sitting, but competing rationales, limiting what legal rule is clearly “settled.”

5. Conclusion

State v. Sims (Kan. 2026) delivers a reversal without a single majority rationale. Two justices would make the case primarily about procedural consequences: when the Supreme Court orders parties to file a remand decision within a specific period in a retained-jurisdiction remand, ignoring that order can foreclose review of an adverse ruling—leaving it in place and dictating the outcome. Three justices, while concurring in reversal, spotlight a broader constitutional concern: felony imprisonment tied to nonpayment of a minimal administrative KORA fee may be so arbitrary and disconnected from public safety that it risks failing rational-basis scrutiny and exceeding police power limits.

The practical takeaways are dual: procedurally, parties must treat remand directives as mandatory pathways back to appellate resolution; and substantively, the concurrence provides a developed framework for future challenges to disproportionate criminal penalties attached to minor fees, even if the court expressly leaves K.S.A. 2018 Supp. 22-4905[l]’s facial validity for another day.