Kansas Open Meetings Act: Rights, Closed Sessions, and Remedies

The Kansas Open Meetings Act, codified at K.S.A. 75-4317 through 75-4320d, requires almost every state and local government body in Kansas to conduct its business where the public can watch, to give notice to anyone who asks for it, and to follow a strict procedure before closing the doors for any reason.¹ When officials break those rules, any Kansan can sue in district court, and the Attorney General or a local prosecutor can seek civil penalties and void illegal decisions.

Which Bodies Have to Follow KOMA

The act applies to all legislative and administrative bodies at the state, county, and local level, including boards, commissions, authorities, councils, committees, and subcommittees that receive or spend public funds.² City councils, school boards, county commissions, and state agency boards are all covered.¹

Subcommittees created by a covered body are themselves subject to KOMA whenever a majority of their members meet. A private entity counts as a subordinate group only if it is under the direct or indirect control of a government body. Receiving a government grant or contract does not, by itself, pull a private organization under the act.²

The judicial branch is generally excluded, with the main exception being judicial nominating commissions, which are covered. The act also does not reach bodies exercising quasi-judicial functions when they are deliberating on quasi-judicial matters, the prisoner review board holding hearings inside a correctional institution, or certain impeachment proceedings in the Kansas House.²

What Counts as a Meeting

Under K.S.A. 75-4317a, a meeting is any gathering, in person or through any medium for interactive communication, where a majority of a body’s members discuss the body’s business.³ Two elements have to be present: participation by a majority of the membership, and discussion of official business. No vote is required. The discussion itself is the trigger.

Purely social gatherings are not meetings, but only as long as nobody starts talking shop. The moment official business comes up at a dinner or event attended by a majority, KOMA applies.⁴

Serial Communications and Walking Quorums

The hardest area in practice involves chains of phone calls, emails, texts, or social media messages that never put everyone in the same room but still assemble a consensus. K.S.A. 75-4318(f) treats a series of interactive communications as a meeting when all three of these conditions are met:

The communications collectively involve a majority of the body’s membership.
They share a common topic concerning the body’s business or affairs.
Any or all participants intend to reach agreement on a matter that would require a binding vote.²

This is where most violations happen. A board chair calls three of five members individually to line up votes before a public meeting, and the outcome is effectively decided in private. That calling-tree approach meets all three criteria and violates the act even though no two members spoke at the same time. Email threads, group chats, and social media exchanges among a majority follow the same rule.

Your Rights at Public Meetings

KOMA does not require newspaper notices or bulletin board postings. Instead, any person or organization that requests notice must be individually told the date, time, and place of every regular or special meeting.² The presiding officer is responsible for providing that notice, though the duty can be delegated.¹ If you want to follow a particular body, you have to ask to be added to its notice list.

At the meeting itself, you can observe and record using cameras, photographic lights, or audio recording devices. The body can set reasonable rules for order but cannot ban recording.² KOMA does not, however, give you a right to speak or to place items on the agenda. Whether to allow public comment is left to each body’s own rules.¹

A common misconception is that the law requires a room large enough to seat everyone who shows up. It does not. The act does not dictate location, room size, or even that a room be used at all; Kansas courts have read “open” to mean accessible, but the statute sets no specific accommodation requirements.¹ Kansas case law has held that when a body prepares an agenda, it should list the topics planned for discussion, even though the statute itself does not require an agenda.

Live streaming is not mandatory. But a body that chooses to stream must make the entire open portion of the meeting available through that medium. An unintentional technology failure or a provider outage does not count as a violation.²

When Officials Can Close the Doors

Public bodies can go into executive session only by following a precise procedure and only for reasons the statute lists. K.S.A. 75-4319 treats a closed meeting as a recess from an open meeting, not a separate event. A member must make a formal motion, seconded and carried, that states three things: the subjects to be discussed, the statutory justification for closing, and the time and place the open meeting will resume. The full text of that motion goes into the permanent minutes.⁵

The permitted reasons include personnel matters involving nonelected employees, attorney-client consultation on privileged legal advice, employer-employee labor negotiations, confidential financial data of corporations or sole proprietors, matters involving individual students, patients, or residents of a public institution, preliminary discussions about acquiring real property, and security measures where public discussion would compromise them.⁵ A handful of additional narrow categories exist for topics like child welfare investigations.

One rule is absolute: no binding action can be taken in executive session. Every final vote must happen after the body reconvenes in open session.⁵ If discussion drifts to topics outside the stated justification, the body has crossed into a violation, and members are responsible for policing those boundaries themselves.

What to Do About a Violation

KOMA offers three enforcement paths, and which one you use shapes what you can get.

File Your Own Lawsuit

Any person can file an action in the district court of the county where the meeting was held to enforce K.S.A. 75-4318 and 75-4319. The court can issue injunctions, mandamus orders, or declaratory judgments compelling compliance. If the court finds a violation, it may award court costs against the public body.⁶ Court costs are not the same as attorney fees, so a successful private plaintiff may still have to pay their own lawyer.

Report It to the Attorney General or Local Prosecutor

The Kansas Attorney General or a county or district attorney can investigate complaints and bring their own enforcement actions.⁷ They have remedies private citizens do not. They can seek civil penalties of up to $500 per violation against any member who knowingly violates the act or intentionally fails to furnish required notices. The “knowingly” threshold matters: an honest mistake is not enough to trigger the penalty.⁸

When the court finds a violation in a case brought by the Attorney General or a district attorney, it may award their reasonable expenses, investigation costs, and attorney fees. If the violation was not made in good faith, the court is required to award those fees.⁶

Get an Illegal Vote Voided — Within 21 Days

Any binding action taken at a meeting that did not substantially comply with KOMA can be voided by a court. But only the Attorney General or a county or district attorney can bring the action, and it has to be filed within 21 days of the meeting.⁸ That window is short and cannot be extended. If you believe a public body took an illegal vote behind closed doors, a prompt complaint to the Attorney General’s office or your local district attorney is the only route to getting the decision undone.

1
Kansas Legislative Research Department. Kansas Open Meetings Act
2
Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Kansas Code 75-4318 – Meetings of State and Subdivisions Open to Public
3
Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Kansas Code 75-4317a – Meeting Defined
4
Kansas Legislative Research Department. Kansas Open Meetings Act
5
Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Kansas Code 75-4319 – Closed or Executive Meetings
6
Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Kansas Code 75-4320a – Enforcement by Private Citizen
7
Attorney General of KS. KOMA-KORA Violations
8
Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Kansas Code 75-4320 – Penalties