One of the longest-serving members of the Kansas Supreme Court has died. Former Chief Justice Kay McFarland died Tuesday.
McFarland was the first woman to serve on the state's highest court and the first female chief justice in Kansas.
McFarland graduated from Washburn Law School where she was the only woman attending classes full time. She was the first woman elected as a Shawnee County district judge in 1972 and was appointed to the Kansas Supreme Court in 1977.
Her pioneering legal career is even more remarkable when you consider that women had just been given the right to vote a mere 15 years before she was born.
McFarland retired in 2009. She died Tuesday at the age of 80.