Westport racism lawsuit adds claim that KC helped keep out Black-owned businesses
A federal lawsuit alleging racism and racketeering in Westport is now also implicating a Kansas City government agency directly.
A new complaint in a lawsuit seeking a $70 million judgment outlines allegations that Jim Ready, the former director of Kansas City’s Regulated Industries Division, worked with the Westport Community Improvement District to keep Black-owned businesses from operating in the entertainment district.
The lawsuit now alleges that the city division, which oversees bars and adult entertainment businesses in the city, unlawfully coordinated efforts with the improvement district to withhold business licenses from the plaintiffs in an attempt to shut them down.
U.S. District Judge Roseann Ketchmark granted the plaintiffs’ request to add to the lawsuit the city and Ready, who led the city division until he left his position earlier this year while the case was pending, according to the lawsuit.
The judge’s ruling also allowed the plaintiffs to file an amended complaint alleging racketeering, antitrust conspiracy and race discrimination against the city, Westport CID and others.
“This ruling validates what our clients have said from the beginning: the exclusion of Black entrepreneurs from Westport was not accidental — it was coordinated, deliberate, and unlawful,” Cecilia Brown, an attorney for the plaintiff businesses, said in an email to The Star.
A spokesperson for the city declined to comment, noting the city does not comment on active litigation.
Attorneys representing the Westport CID and other defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In response to an update in the case last year, the Westport CID said in a statement that its members “strongly refute” the plaintiffs’ “baseless” allegations but that it would not otherwise comment on ongoing legal proceedings.
Allegations of racism and racketeering
The new complaint, which was filed on Monday, now argues that Ready used the city’s regulatory muscle to support the CID’s efforts to block certain businesses from operating in Westport, in what the plaintiffs called a “multi-year pattern of racketeering activity” that includes extortion and interference with commerce.
The lawsuit stems from a dispute between several Black-owned businesses and Westport’s Community Improvement District, the semi-private board that oversees the neighborhood. The business owners argue that they’ve been denied leases in Westport for racially discriminatory reasons under the guise of improving public safety.
Earlier this month, the court found that plaintiffs made plausible claims of race discrimination, focusing on the allegations that some Westport businesses did not want a “hip-hop crowd” in the entertainment district because such crowds allegedly led to violence.
The lawsuit also focuses on the use of Good Neighbor Agreements, which are private contracts intended to give Westport stakeholders a way to enforce safety standards in an entertainment district long plagued by fights and shootings.
Among the terms of a Good Neighbor Agreement is that bar owners must maintain a no-weapons policy, fund and maintain security cameras, share footage with police, and pay $1,000 to the CID for each violent tavern disturbance involving police if more than one disturbance happens in a year.
The lawsuit has argued that these private contracts allowed the CID to selectively enforce its rules, particularly against the Black-owned businesses.
While the city is not part of those contracts, the plaintiffs also argue Ready and the city would not issue or renew business licenses unless a Good Neighbor Agreement was in place. It also alleges that Ready would make licensing decisions based on private complaints rather than violations of city ordinances.
The businesses argue that this amounted to a coordinated effort to have the city government illegally require and enforce an unfair private contract between the businesses and the Westport CID.
By allowing the new case to proceed, Brown said the court “recognized that Plaintiffs have plausibly alleged a coordinated effort between the Westport CID and City officials to circumvent Kansas City’s own licensing codes in order to restrict which businesses — and which people — are allowed to operate in Westport.”
