By DIANE CARROLL

The Kansas City Star 

A Johnson County judge barred District Attorney Phill Kline Thursday from filing any more legal motions against Planned Parenthood without letting him review them first.

District Court Judge Stephen Tatum took that unusual step after Planned Parenthood attorneys accused Kline of attaching a document under court seal to a motion he filed this week.

Though Kline contended the document was not under seal, Tatum said he was imposing the review process “as a safety mechanism.”

The unexpected hearing was requested by Planned Parenthood attorneys after the document -- a court ruling from a Shawnee County judge --became public. The April 2007 ruling stated that Kline had the authority to transfer Planned Parenthood records he had obtained while state attorney general to the Johnson County district attorney’s office.

The records are believed to be at the heart of the criminal case Kline filed last fall against Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri and its Comprehensive Health clinic in Overland Park. In the complaint, Kline accuses the clinic of forging, falsifying and failing to maintain records from abortions conducted in 2003.

Although Kline says he has the records he needs to prosecute from his time as attorney general, he still subpoenaed the same records this year from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. At the very least, he says, he wants the department to verify that the records he already possesses are the ones they provided in 2006.

KDHE and Planned Parenthood are fighting the current subpoena. Tatum is scheduled to rule Monday on their motion to quash it.

At a hearing April 3 on the motion, KDHE chief counsel Yvonne Anderson said state law prohibits her department from disclosing information that could identify a patient or an abortion provider. The only exceptions, she said, are for use by the state attorney general or the state Board of Healing Arts in a criminal or disciplinary proceeding.

Kline, who never filed a legal reply to the KDHE motion before the hearing, unexpectedly filed that response on Monday with the attachment.

In the reply, Kline states his subpoena does not seek the identity of either patients or providers. If the state Legislature had intended to bar district attorneys from seeking other information in abortion records, it would have stated that in the law, Kline argues.

In court Thursday, Irigonegary said that Kline knew when he filed his legal reply that he was attaching records that were under seal by multiple courts.

“In order for the justice system to work, it has to have integrity,” said Planned Parenthood attorney Pedro Irigonegaray. Instead, Irigonegaray said, Kline has turned the case into “a political process.”

Kline, however, said Anderson lifted the seal on his ruling on the eve of the April 3 hearing. He tried to introduce the ruling at that hearing, he said, but Irigonegary objected, saying then it was under seal. Tatum took the document at that time, sealed it in an envelope and said he would sort out the status of the document before it was made public.

Kline said he not believe that Tatum sealed the document at that point. And he believed he had the authority to attach it.

Irigonegary asked Tatum to hold Kline in contempt or to issue sanctions against him but Tatum declined to do so.