Topeka Independent Living Resource Center (TILRC)

Legal Status and Funding

The Topeka Independent Living Resource Center was founded in 1980 to promote and support de-institutionalization of people with disabilities. ²

Its current legal status is unclear. TILRC has not filed an annual tax return with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) since 2018, and in 2022, the IRS automatically revoked TILRC’s 501(c)(3) charitable status for failing to file a report for three years in a row. ³ However, it continued to file required annual reports with the Kansas Secretary of State during that time and remains a nonprofit corporation in good standing with the state. ⁴

TILRC’s website, which had been operational since 1999, went offline in June 2024. ⁵ That same month, longtime executive director Ami Hyten left the organization. ⁶

From 2015 through 2023, TILRC received annual grant funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Administration for Community Living program. Its federal funding through HHS ranged from $689,201 in 2020 to $277,722 in 2023. ⁷ In 2023, however, HHS began efforts to claw back previous grant funding from TILRC, charging back $116,341 in 2023 for a 2018 grant and $394,063 for its 2023 to 2024 funding. ⁷

Advocacy and Litigation

Health Policy

In 2019, Topeka Independent Living Resource Center and other organizations sued the Kansas state government over the state’s practice of placing people with persistent mental health challenges into privately owned nursing homes that specialized in such residents. ^{8 9} TILRC and its fellow plaintiffs claimed that this practice violated the Americans with Disabilities Act’s prohibition against unnecessary segregation of people with mental health disabilities. ⁹ In 2021, the plaintiffs reached a settlement with the state centered on an eight-year plan to create new housing units, employment programs and other services for people with mental health disabilities. ⁹

In 2020, TILRC and other plaintiffs represented by the Center for Public Representation (CPR) filed a complaint with the federal Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights claiming that the Kansas state government’s proposed COVID-19 protocols included taking ventilators away from people with disabilities who used them on a regular basis to treat acute COVID-19 patients in the event of a ventilator shortage. ¹⁰ In response, state officials removed those references from the plan. ¹¹

Election Integrity

In 2021 the Kansas Legislature passed an election integrity law over the veto of Governor Laura Kelly (D-KS). ¹² Among other provisions, the law made it a felony to engage in conduct “that gives the appearance of being an election official” or that “would cause another person to believe a person engaging in such conduct is an election official.” ¹²

The Topeka Independent Living Resource Center, the League of Women Voters of Kansas, the left-of-center youth voter registration group Loud Light, and the Kansas Appleseed Center for Law and Justice sued to overturn the law, arguing that provisions concerning impersonating election officials could potentially be construed to criminalize their voter registration and education efforts. ¹² They were represented by ACLU Kansas. While a state appeals court originally ruled that the organizations did not have standing to challenge the law as they had not been charged under it, the state’s Supreme Court overruled that decision in 2023. ¹²

In May 2024, the Kansas Supreme Court issued a ruling on a combined set of three election law challenges brought by TILRC and other plaintiffs. ¹³ It ruled that the impersonation components of the statute were “overbroad,” but rejected arguments by TILRC and others that limitations on ballot bundling and enhanced signature verification requirements were violations of the state constitution’s guarantee of the right to vote. ¹⁴

The Kansas Supreme Court did allow TILRC and its fellow plaintiffs to return to the lower courts to litigate the question of whether the methods Kansas governments use to verify voter signatures violate voters’ equal protection and due process rights. ¹⁴ The plaintiffs had argued that the statute failed to set specific standards for verifying signatures or require training of election officials on how to do so. ¹⁴