Kansas City might not host national collegiate conference over Missouri abortion ban

Kansas City officials say that a national collegiate organization has decided not to host its annual convention in town in response to Missouri’s new law banning most abortions statewide, but organization officials say that’s not necessarily the case.

Kansas City was favorably viewed as a destination for the National Association for College Admission Counseling’s planned conference in 2025. But according to city emails obtained by The Star through Missouri’s Sunshine Law, the group’s vendor recently notified Kansas City organizers that the city was no longer being considered to host.

On Tuesday, however, a spokeswoman with the group said Kansas City is still being considered and nothing has been ruled out yet.

“We have not decided on our conference location for 2025, and we recently notified a representative of Visit KC that we were pausing to weigh a range of factors,” Melanie Marquez Parra, chief communications officer for NACAC, said in an email to The Star. “Kansas City is among several sites being considered while our organization takes time to discuss guiding principles for how event locations are chosen.”

Parra said that the organization’s vendor provided incorrect information to Visit KC and that that information had since been updated.

Asked for comment, a spokesman with Visit KC said in an email, “Visit KC is a nonprofit organization and must remain neutral in all matters political and otherwise” and referred further questions to the mayor’s office.

Denise DeJulio, an account manager for VisitKC, Kansas City’s nonprofit arm that seeks to attract tourism, wrote in an email to area hotel owners and city officials Monday morning that the NACAC project had been in the works prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, saying: “this one stings.” She claimed that St. Louis and Columbus, Ohio, were no longer being considered.

“It is nothing we can control,” she added.

Deputy City Manager Kimiko Gilmore shared the claim with other city officials on Monday, including the mayor’s office.

Missouri’s abortion law took effect last month, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturn of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which granted federal protections for abortion procedures. A so-called trigger ban was passed by state lawmakers and signed by Gov. Mike Parson in 2019 in anticipation of that action.

During a phone interview with The Star on Monday, Mayor Quinton Lucas said he did not know of any other conferences that might go by the wayside in response to Missouri’s trigger law taking effect. He said the conference could have generated thousands of hotel room nights for the city.

“What I’m scared of is the signal that our state’s stance may do the exact opposite of standing up for people’s rights, which will have a negative impact on business in Missouri, and negative impact on money in Missouri,” Lucas said.

Last month, Kansas City learned it would host the United States Conference of Mayors and games for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Neither of those were accidents, Lucas said, but the results of hard work.

But Lucas said the toxicity of Missouri’s political culture leads to conventions, conferences, businesses and Kansas Citians — potential and current residents — saying they don’t want to be in that environment.

Lucas said people who are LGBTQ, who are concerned about reproductive health, and those who care about someone in those groups, feel unwelcome in Missouri. And he fears Kansas City will be perceived that way too.

“We have to stop making it a place where we are telling people, do not come here, that you are not welcome,” Lucas said. “What we need to instead say is that no matter who you are, what you believe in where you are in life, you can be here. You should be here and you’ll be welcome.”

The Star’s Luke Nozicka contributed to this report.