Strengths

• Boards may only use directly related crimes.
• Bans boards from using vague, arbitrary standards like “moral turpitude” and “good character.”

Areas of Improvement

• Make the decisions obtained during state’s petition process binding and add protections for due process.
• Extend state’s protections to health and white-collar professions.
• Require boards to consider evidence of rehabilitation and other factors.

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A 2018 reform sought to drastically improve Kansas’s protections for ex-offenders, which previously consisted of one single line of text. However, several loopholes undermine the new law, resulting in a D+ for the state’s final grade. For starters, the law expressly exempts multiple boards and licenses, including the state healing arts, nursing, and pharmacy boards as well as “any profession that has an educational requirement for licensure that requires a degree beyond a bachelor’s degree.”

In addition, while the state did create a petition process, the 2018 law explicitly states that any decision made on an applicant “shall not be binding.” Since the petition is supposed to allow an ex-offender to see if their record would be disqualifying before they commit to any costly training, the Kansas law completely undermines that purpose. Moreover, the state bans boards from considering records older than five years, but exempts felonies and class A misdemeanors, rendering that reform toothless.

Statute: Kan. Stat. Ann. § 74-120 (2018)