Missouri Preempts Kansas City Screening Rules 2025

This legislation arrived in direct response to Kansas City's Ordinance 231019, the Fair Chance Housing ordinance, which took effect in August 2024 and imposed exactly the four restrictions this state law now preempts.

[Cite: Alpine Property Management Kansas City, "Ordinance 231019 & Fair Chance Housing: What KC Landlords Need to Know"]

A landlord who built compliance procedures specifically around that Kansas City ordinance now has a state law that removes the local legal basis for most of those requirements.

No Missouri city or county can enforce an ordinance requiring a landlord to accept a tenant based on housing assistance program funding as that tenant's income source.

[Cite: Missouri House official bill summary, CCS SS HCS HBs 595 & 343]

Kansas City's ordinance had required landlords to accept all lawful income sources, including Section 8 vouchers, as part of its broader fair chance framework. That specific mandate is no longer enforceable under this state law.

[Cite: Alpine Property Management Kansas City, "Ordinance 231019 & Fair Chance Housing: What KC Landlords Need to Know"]

Cities can't restrict a landlord's use of income-qualifying methods, credit reports, eviction or property damage history, or criminal history when evaluating a prospective tenant.

[Cite: Missouri House official bill summary, CCS SS HCS HBs 595 & 343]

Kansas City's ordinance had specifically prohibited using credit score, criminal history, or eviction record as the sole reason for denial, and had required a landlord to consider "mitigating information" before denying an applicant on those grounds.

[Cite: Alpine Property Management Kansas City, "Ordinance 231019 & Fair Chance Housing: What KC Landlords Need to Know"]

Under the preempted Kansas City ordinance, a landlord could still consider criminal history or eviction records, but couldn't rely on that factor alone to deny an applicant without weighing other, mitigating information first.

[Cite: Alpine Property Management Kansas City, "Ordinance 231019 & Fair Chance Housing: What KC Landlords Need to Know"]

With that local requirement preempted, a landlord in Kansas City now has more direct latitude to deny an applicant based on screening criteria like credit, criminal, or eviction history without that additional local mitigating-information step.

A city or county ordinance limiting the amount of security deposit a landlord can require from a tenant is no longer enforceable.

[Cite: Missouri House official bill summary, CCS SS HCS HBs 595 & 343]

A landlord operating in a Missouri city that previously imposed its own local deposit ceiling isn't bound by that local cap anymore, though this preemption doesn't create any new state-level deposit cap in its place.

A local ordinance requiring that tenants automatically receive a right of first refusal, such as when a rental property is being sold, is preempted.

[Cite: Missouri House official bill summary, CCS SS HCS HBs 595 & 343]

A landlord in a city that previously had to offer a tenant first opportunity to purchase or continue leasing a property under local law no longer has that specific local obligation.

Kansas City's ordinance had also imposed a three-year recordkeeping requirement and penalties up to $1,000 per violation tied to the screening restrictions this state law now preempts.

[Cite: Alpine Property Management Kansas City, "Ordinance 231019 & Fair Chance Housing: What KC Landlords Need to Know"]

Since the underlying screening restrictions are preempted, the enforcement mechanism built around them, including that recordkeeping duty and the per-violation fine, loses its practical basis as well.

This law doesn't preempt a local ordinance that prohibits discrimination based solely on veteran status.

[Cite: Missouri House official bill summary, CCS SS HCS HBs 595 & 343]

A landlord evaluating a local ordinance that touches veteran-status protections specifically should treat that piece as distinct from the broader voucher, screening, deposit, and first-refusal preemptions covered here; it's carved out rather than swept in.

The law also preserves a local government's ability to enter a voluntary agreement with a private party regarding rent amounts for subsidized properties.

[Cite: Missouri House official bill summary, CCS SS HCS HBs 595 & 343]

That's a meaningful distinction from a mandatory ordinance. A landlord who chooses to participate in a subsidized-housing rent agreement with a local government isn't affected by this preemption; the law targets mandates imposed on landlords generally, not voluntary arrangements a landlord opts into.

Despite this preemption, Kansas City landlords still can't reject an applicant based on a lawful income source other than housing assistance, such as wages, disability payments, child support, or pension income.

[Cite: Alpine Property Management Kansas City, "Ordinance 231019 & Fair Chance Housing: What KC Landlords Need to Know"]

That's the piece of the original ordinance's source-of-income protection that survives; the state law specifically targeted the housing-assistance-voucher mandate, not a broader ban on income-source discrimination generally.

Nothing in this state preemption changes a landlord's obligations under the federal Fair Housing Act, which continues to apply in Missouri regardless of what local screening ordinances remain enforceable.

[Cite: Alpine Property Management Kansas City, "Ordinance 231019 & Fair Chance Housing: What KC Landlords Need to Know"]

A landlord who treats this state law as full deregulation of tenant screening is working from an incomplete picture; federal protections around protected classes still apply independent of any local ordinance's status.

This preemption targets four specific categories: voucher-acceptance mandates, screening-criteria restrictions, deposit caps, and right-of-first-refusal mandates.

[Cite: Missouri House official bill summary, CCS SS HCS HBs 595 & 343]

A local ordinance provision outside those four categories, including the surviving non-voucher source-of-income protection discussed above, isn't automatically preempted just because it originated in the same broader local ordinance.

Governor Kehoe signed this bill on July 14, 2025, but it didn't take effect until August 28, 2025, roughly six weeks later.

[Cite: Governor Mike Kehoe, official press release, "Governor Kehoe Signs Ten Bills into Law"]

That gap gave landlords and cities a defined runway to adjust screening procedures and local enforcement practices before the preemption actually took legal effect, rather than facing an immediate, same-day change.

The practical starting point is reviewing current screening procedures, deposit policies, and lease-renewal practices in any Missouri city that previously had a local ordinance touching these four areas, and confirming which local requirements are no longer enforceable versus which, like the non-voucher source-of-income protection in Kansas City, still apply.

For any Kansas City property specifically, updating application review procedures to reflect that credit, criminal, and eviction history can now be used more directly in screening decisions, while confirming applicants still aren't denied based on a lawful non-voucher income source, closes the practical gap this preemption creates.