Olathe ? Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline isn’t the first newly appointed lead prosecutor to clean house, according to officials in other counties.

The seven former Johnson County assistant prosecutors and one investigator who lost their jobs the day Kline took office join staffers of other Kansas district attorney offices who faced the same fate when a new DA took over. The eight former Johnson County employees have challenged their firings.

“It’s well-understood that when the new district attorney comes in that everybody there that is an assistant district attorney is on the chopping block,” Douglas County Administrator Craig Weinaug said.

Only the state’s six largest counties have district attorneys, and county administrators and attorneys in some of those counties say they have never seen such a large number of workers fired.

A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court against Kline last month by eight former Johnson County employees appears to be the first to directly challenge a DA’s authority to fire.

A ruling for either side would let every district attorney in Kansas know “what the measure of his (or her) authority is,” Hal Walker, chief counsel for the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kan., said.

Weinaug and Walker said they believe they have the authority to fire at will, as Kline has contended.

Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston declined to comment and Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson did not return a message left by The Associated Press.

There was significant turnover in Douglas County when Branson was elected in 2004 and in Shawnee County when Robert Hecht was elected in 2000, officials in those counties said.

Kline took office Jan. 8 as the appointed successor to Democrat Paul Morrison, who had two years left on his term when he ousted Kline from the Kansas attorney general’s office in November’s elections.