Child Care Death Risk Rises: Kansas HB 2045 Law Warned to Be Deadly After New State Report
Kansas Legislature passed House Bill 2045, significantly deregulating child care by raising the limit for unlicensed care to four children for 35 hours weekly.
According to a new report from the State Child Death Review Board (SCDRB), this law compromises child safety, noting that nine of 16 child care-related fatalities over the past five years occurred in unregulated settings.
The report explicitly urges lawmakers to strengthen licensing standards, warning that the changes reverse critical protections established by Lexie's Law.
State's Own Data Sounds the Alarm on Infant Deaths
The urgency of this news comes directly from the SCDRB's latest annual findings, which detail a shocking history and a chilling forecast.
Using recent data, the SCDRB confirmed that nine out of 16 child care-related deaths over the last five years occurred in unlicensed child care settings.
The most disturbing figure is that 14 of those 16 victims were infants, with 13 fatalities directly linked to unsafe sleep environments.
These are exactly the kinds of tragedies that licensed providers are legally required to prevent through mandatory safe sleep, CPR, and first-aid training. The SCDRB’s message is unequivocal:
“It is important that all children are cared for by licensed providers, as unlicensed child care poses increased risk for injury and death due to the absence of background checks, required training, and regulatory oversight.”
The SCDRB is now urgently pushing the Legislature to restore safety protections, arguing that HB 2045 has tragically reversed progress made years ago under Lexie’s Law, which was passed after a toddler died in unregulated care.
How Deregulation Cripples Enforcement
The legal shift under HB 2045 is the core reason for the safety warnings; it severely broadens the unlicensed child care threshold, making state oversight far more difficult.
Before the law: An unlicensed provider could watch only two unrelated children for a maximum of 20 combined hours per week.
Under HB 2045: An individual can now legally care for up to four children (two of whom can be infants) for up to 35 hours per child weekly without a state license. This change effectively allows for a whopping 140 hours of completely unregulated care per week in a single home.
This expanded exemption creates a massive legal loophole, raising the burden of proof for state regulators, who must now prove a provider exceeds these new, much higher thresholds before they can legally intervene.
This means the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) can only act after harm has occurred, fundamentally shifting their role from prevention to investigation.
As explored in “Who’s Liable After a Daycare Injury Happens?”, once an injury or death occurs in a child care setting, the legal landscape shifts dramatically from proactive prevention to questions of negligence, duty of care, and civil liability.
The same principle applies here: by expanding exemptions and reducing oversight, Kansas law may be inadvertently increasing the likelihood that accountability only comes after tragedy strikes.
Attorney Elizabeth A. Seaton, a prominent Kansas City child welfare and administrative law specialist, highlighted the danger to public safety:
“Licensing exists to protect both children and caregivers. When we dilute those standards, we aren’t just creating flexibility—we’re weakening the legal mechanisms that ensure accountability when tragedy occurs.”
This new legal ambiguity makes it exponentially harder for the state to use administrative fines or criminal referrals under state law to proactively enforce basic safety.
Liability, Fines, and Reform
The SCDRB did not stop at simply issuing a warning; it demanded specific legal changes to undo the risk. The board called on the 2026 Legislature to make the following immediate legal reforms:
- Mandatory Licensing: Require licensing for virtually all home-based child care providers.
- Increased Penalties: Update K.S.A. 65-514 to significantly increase daily fines for illegal operation from $\$50$ to $\$200$ and reclassify severe violations as felonies.
- Immediate Action: Grant regulators the explicit power to issue immediate cease-and-desist orders and public warnings against dangerous unlicensed operations.
The political response to this safety alarm has been split. Governor Laura Kelly and Democratic leaders, who signed the bipartisan compromise, emphasize the law's attempt to streamline the system and establish a new Office of Early Childhood to cut bureaucratic red tape.
Meanwhile, supporters like Rep. Sean Tarwater (R-Stilwell) argue the law is about “empowering parents,” not sacrificing safety, stating that over-regulation simply prices families out of licensed care, forcing mothers out of the workforce.
Ultimately, the legal community consensus remains: without basic oversight, the state has tied its own hands, inviting both increased liability and a heartbreaking rise in preventable child deaths.
For families paying the average Kansas child care cost of over $\$10,000$ per year per child, the pressure is immense, but the SCDRB’s data confirms that nothing is more important than knowing your provider is legally trained and compliant.
