Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach recently issued a legal opinion declaring that some cities may publish notices on their own websites despite a state law requiring them to be published in local newspapers.
“Home-rule provisions of the Kansas Constitution … allows cities to exempt themselves from nonuniform acts of the Legislature,” Kobach wrote. “We conclude that a second-class city may exempt itself by charter ordinance. And, once having done so may then choose to publish official city business on its own webpage.”
Municipalities with populations between 2,000 and 15,000 people are considered “cities of the second class” in Kansas.
AG supports newspaper notice in Wyoming lawsuit
Two municipalities in Wyoming passed nearly identical ordinances in 2021 exempting themselves from state statutes mandating the publication of various notices in their local paper of record. A lawsuit subsequently filed by that paper — Lee Enterprise’s Casper Star-Tribune — seeks to compel the cities of Mills and Bar Nunn to publish those notices within its pages.
The Star-Tribune is the official newspaper of Natrona County. Mills and Bar Nunn are small but growing communities within the county.
Last month, the state of Wyoming weighed in on the side of the Star-Tribune. The attorney general’s office filed a brief in the case, arguing the state’s public notice laws are valid and must be followed by both local governments.
Wyoming municipalities opt out of state’s public notice laws
There’s a nascent movement of counties asserting their right not to enforce laws they believe violate the U.S. Constitution. Although the Constitution explicitly states federal law is “the supreme law of the land,” public officials in these counties say they can ignore federal edicts that run counter to their interpretation of the founding document.
That spirit of rebellion has reached into the realm of public notice laws this year in Wyoming, where two municipalities in Natrona County recently claimed the right not to run notices in their local newspapers despite state laws requiring them to do so.