? The Kansas Supreme Court issued an order Friday regarding the separation of powers, reaffirming an earlier order that struck down a 2014 law that imposed a strict 180-day time limit for appellate courts to issue decisions.

In a 20-page order signed by Chief Justice Lawton Nuss, the court rejected Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt’s request that it reconsider an order originally issued July 1, which said the law constitutes an “interference with judicial decision-making.”

Both orders were strongly worded statements on a legal principle at the center of other cases that are likely headed to the Supreme Court involving a provision of the judicial system’s budget that threatens to cut off all funding for the courts if, as has happened, the courts overturn a law that changes the way chief judges of the district courts are selected.

Friday’s order, and the earlier one issued July 1, both stem from a case in Mitchell County, in north-central Kansas, involving Joseph M. Buser, who was convicted of sex offenses in 2009. He initially challenged whether a 2011 change in the Kansas Offender Registration Act could be applied retroactively.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in his case on Sept. 11, 2014.

Earlier that year, however, Kansas lawmakers passed a bill, signed by Gov. Sam Brownback, requiring the Supreme Court and the Kansas Court of Appeals to render decisions within 180 days after the matter is submitted for a decision.

That bill was enacted largely in response to another case from Douglas County, Miller vs. Johnson, which took the Supreme Court three years to decide.

Under the new 180-day time limit, all attorneys in a case are required within 10 days to file a joint request that a decision be entered “without further delay.”

In Buser’s case, however, his attorney, Meryl Carver-Allmond, of Lawrence, filed a petition on March 26, asking the court to declare the time limit unconstitutional. She argued that the issue was complex, that Buser deserved to have his case considered fully, and that, in her opinion, the law required her to violate the code of ethics by asking for a hasty decision.

Carver-Allmond mailed a copy of her motion to the Mitchell County Attorney, who did not respond.

On July 1, the Supreme Court issued an order, striking down the 2014 statute. But then, Attorney General Schmidt filed what the court called a “self-styled” motion asking the court to withdraw its order.

Typically, the attorney general’s office represents the state in any case seeking to declare a state law unconstitutional. Schmidt said he did not respond to Carver-Allmond’s motion because the Mitchell County Attorney never sent it to him.

Schmidt argued that the county attorney “was under the seemingly mistaken impression that all filings were served on the Attorney General under this Court’s rules and common practice.”

Even if that were true, the court said, “ignorance of the rules does not constitute excusable neglect” under the court’s rules of procedure.

“We will not grant the State a privilege unavailable to other parties and their counsel in Kansas, i.e., three bites at the same apple,” the court wrote.

Meanwhile, the court still has not ruled in Buser’s original case, challenging the retroactive application of a change in the offender registry law. Two other cases dealing with the same issue, which were argued on the same day as Buser’s case, also are still pending before the court.