How do judges of the Kansas Court of Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Kansas Court of Appeals / Joined 2003 / Active

Thomas E. Malone

Judge, Kansas Court of Appeals

Thomas E. Malone is a Judge of the Kansas Court of Appeals, serving since 2003. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2003 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2003	Kansas Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Washburn University

Judicial Record

In our data, Malone authored 220 published opinions for the court (1996–2019), plus 13 dissents and 24 concurrences. Most cited: In the Interest of M.B. (109 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 206 of these were attributed to Malone by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
2008	In the Interest of M.B.†	39 Kan. App. 2d 31	109
2016	State v. Schmidt†	53 Kan. App. 2d 225	59
2004	State v. Beck†	88 P.3d 1233	46
2015	Majors v. Hillebrand· Concurrence†	51 Kan. App. 2d 625	43
2016	State v. Martin†	52 Kan. App. 2d 474	38
2019	In Re Interests K.H.†	444 P.3d 354	35
2006	State v. Blanchette†	35 Kan. App. 2d 686	34
2009	Hemphill v. Ford Motor Co.	206 P.3d 1	30
2004	State v. Miller†	32 Kan. App. 2d 1099	30
2010	State v. Baber	240 P.3d 980	27
2009	Mitchell v. Kansas Department of Revenue†	200 P.3d 496	25
2007	City of Norton v. Wonderly	172 P.3d 1205	23
2005	Hayes v. State†	34 Kan. App. 2d 157	23
2011	State v. Waldrup†	263 P.3d 867	22
2011	State v. Johnson†	264 P.3d 1018	21

Showing the 15 most-cited of 257 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Kansas Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Thomas E. Malone on?: Thomas E. Malone is a Judge of the Kansas Court of Appeals.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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23 years on the Kansas Court of Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).