Denied access to criminal records in Kansas boy’s death sparks First Amendment lawsuit

A news organization's lawsuit in Linn County, Kansas, argue a relatively new state law violates the First Amendment rights by denying access to court records. (iStock via Getty Images Plus)

TOPEKA — When reporters at a Kansas newspaper heard about the gruesome death of a local 13-year-old boy in December, one tried to get the court records that could establish an official account of how the boy died.

A Linn County News reporter asked a court clerk to hand over the documents that alleged a man dumped the boy’s body in a Missouri creek after the man’s dog killed the boy. The Linn County clerk said the records didn’t exist.

Kansas legislators in 2025 passed a law requiring courts across the state to keep criminal case files secret until someone is arrested or an arrest warrant is denied. The newspaper’s publisher, Walker Publishing, filed a lawsuit Thursday against three judicial branch officials, arguing they violated the First Amendment by denying the existence of case records and eschewing public access to the judicial system.

“When a criminal complaint is withheld from the public, it leaves the public unaware that a charge has been filed and that state power has been invoked,” the lawsuit said.

It said court clerks created a “legal fiction” when they repeatedly denied reporters’ access.

Damon Leonard, the Pleasanton man accused of dumping the boy’s body, hadn’t been arrested by the time reporters got wind of the story. Law enforcement in Kansas and Missouri had warrants out for his arrest. Court records in Bates County, Missouri, detail the coordination between law enforcement agencies in both states. When Bates County Sheriff’s Office deputies found Leonard, he told them he knew where to find Airen Andula, the missing 13-year-old from Pleasanton.

Leonard drove deputies to a creek in a rural part of the county, according to Deputy Sheriff Amy Fishbaugh’s probable cause affidavit. Deputies found the boy’s body down a large ravine, at the bottom of the creek, and Leonard admitted he put him there, the affidavit said.

But in Linn County, reporter Barbara Proffitt was trying to obtain details about law enforcement actions in Kansas. The record was blank.

Felony charges against Leonard still do not appear in Kansas courts’ public access system as of Friday afternoon. Leonard, 47, is being held on a $50,000 bond in the Bates County jail, where he was charged with abandonment of a corpse Dec. 22.

He hasn’t been arrested in Kansas, so the official record of allegations against him remains chimerical.

Senate Bill 204, which changed state law to require criminal cases be sealed until an arrest warrant is resolved, passed both chambers of the Republican-led Kansas Legislature without opposition, and Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly signed it on April 25, 2025. It went into effect on July 1 of that year.

It sailed through the session with little pushback or discussion of the implications on the public’s right to know. Proponents said allowing criminal case information to be issued before a defendant is arrested posed a safety risk.

Johnson County District Attorney Stephen Howe told House and Senate committees the practice puts victims of violence, law enforcement and the public at risk. Kansas courts began making adult criminal case records readily available online in 2019, when the judicial branch switched systems.

Howe said the publication of a criminal complaint or information related to an arrest warrant allows “the offender to have the ability to intimidate, hurt, or kill victims prior to their arrest” and gives an offender “notice of the case and the warrant prior to their arrest.”

“It also places the public at risk from individuals who will flee from the police because of the warrant, which results in many traffic fatalities throughout the state,” Howe wrote in testimony.

Shane Rolf, executive vice president of the Kansas Bail Agents Association, questioned the need for automatically sealing cases without specific reasons from a court.

“Other states are completely transparent on this issue and it does not appear to have impacted public safety,” Rolf wrote in testimony to the House Judiciary Committee.

Walker Publishing is asking the Linn County District Court to put the law on pause, preventing courts from automatically sealing records until the lawsuit is resolved. It also asks the court to ultimately find the law unconstitutional and award attorney fees.