KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri woman has filed a lawsuit alleging that police wrongfully arrested her teenage son in 2016 and were deliberately indifferent to his rights.

Sherri James is accusing Kansas City police of unlawful arrest, negligent training and supervision and deprivation of her son Tyree Bell’s constitutional rights.

The lawsuit says police were responding to a report of three black teenagers with a firearm when they arrested Bell. The lawsuit says the teen’s appearance didn’t completely match the suspect’s description.

Bell spent three weeks in the Jackson County Juvenile Detention Center. The lawsuit says police had dash cam footage that would’ve exonerated Bell, but authorities didn’t immediately view the video.

A department spokesman declined to comment on the pending litigation. A court filing responding to the suit denies the allegations.

EUDORA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas home day care worker who was convicted in the death of a 9-month-old baby is seeking a new trial.

44-year-old Carrody Buchhorn was scheduled to be sentenced Friday. She was convicted in July of unintentionally but recklessly causing the death of Oliver “Ollie” Ortiz, of Eudora, on Sept. 29, 2016, at the Sunshine Kids Group Daycare Home in Eudora.

Buchhorn has a new legal team that is trying to get her a new trial. Douglas County District Court Judge Sally Pokorny rescheduled Buchhorn’s sentencing for Oct. 18 to allow time for her new attorneys to file their motion for a new trial and the state to file its response.

Since her conviction, Buchhorn has been in jail without bond.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas City area man has filed a lawsuit alleging that a trip to an urgent care clinic for a foot wound led to gangrene and a leg amputation.

Trenton Twidwell filed the lawsuit last month against Kristin Duncan, the doctor he saw at the CareNow urgent care clinic in Overland Park.

The lawsuit alleges that Duncan diagnosed Twidwell with a common infection called cellulitis in August 2017. The lawsuit alleges Duncan prescribed ineffective antibiotics, never cultured the wound and didn’t order any lab work.

The suit says Twidwell developed gangrene and sepsis just weeks later, leading to a below-knee amputation.

The newspaper was unable to reach Duncan for comment. A CareNow employee says she no longer works there.

SHELBYVILLE, Mo. (AP) — A mid-Missouri prosecutor has pleaded guilty to four misdemeanors and will resign after he backed his truck into a Columbia restaurant in 2014.

Moniteau County Prosecutor Shayne Healea entered the plea Tuesday to three counts of misdemeanor assault and one count of driving while intoxicated.

Investigators alleged Healea was driving drunk when his truck hit Addison’s restaurant in October 2014, injuring four people. He was charged with leaving the scene of an accident and four counts of felony assault. His trial was scheduled to start Tuesday.

As part of his plea, he will serve two years of probation. He was to resign Tuesday and will not seek re-election.

Healea said he didn’t realize he hit the building and returned to the scene when he realized what had happened.

TOPEKA—Fiscal year tax collections exceeded previous year’s totals by $79.49 million according to data from the latest revenue report released Tuesday from the Kansas Department of Revenue.

Fiscal year 2019 collections so far total $993.36 million.

August tax collections were up $33.99 million, or 7.38 percent over last year.

Individual income tax collections totaled $220.78 million which is $25.09 million or 12.82 percent above the same time last year. August sales tax collections exceeded last August’s collections by $537,427.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — An Indiana woman whose husband and three children drowned when a duck boat sank in a Missouri lake has filed a federal lawsuit requesting an end to the manufacture and operation of the amphibious vehicles in the U.S. and elsewhere until they are redesigned for safety.

Tia Coleman, of Indianapolis, filed the lawsuit Tuesday against Ripley Entertainment and five other companies that manufacture and operate the Ride The Ducks tourist attraction.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Former moderate Republican Gov. Bill Graves has endorsed Democrat Laura Kelly in the Kansas governor’s race.

Kelly’s campaign announced the endorsement Monday and posted a YouTube video of Graves praising Kelly, a veteran state senator from Topeka.

Graves says in the video that Kelly will bring Republicans and Democrats together to solve problems.

The former GOP governor’s endorsement came after the union representing firefighters in Kansas endorsed Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach last week. It previously has endorsed Democrats.

Kelly and independent candidate Greg Orman are wooing moderate Republicans alienated by Kobach’s conservative politics and advocacy of tough immigration policies.

Graves served two terms as governor from 1995 until 2003. He won re-election in 1998 with a record 73 percent of the vote but clashed frequently with GOP conservatives.

By DAN MARGOLIES

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt has defended the state’s decision to weigh in on a case that could limit transgender rights.

Asked by reporters about Kansas’ decision to join 15 other states in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that it’s legal to fire people for being transgender, Schmidt noted that the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Kansas, has taken that position.

“Almost certainly at some point, some plaintiff or group of plaintiffs is going to file a lawsuit to test the continued validity of the 2007 decision that binds Kansas today,” Schmidt said. “Or we can say, ‘Let’s do our part to try to get this in front of the Supreme Court as quickly as possible.’ That adds certainty, it reduces litigation risk and cost.”

Schmidt was referring to the 10th Circuit’s decision that federal laws prohibiting sex discrimination do not protect transgender people.

That decision runs contrary to the majority of courts that have addressed the issue. And although Schmidt said the ruling was binding on Kansas, the state is free to adopt a broader interpretation of the law if it wishes, a legal expert said.

“They can always extend broader protections at the state than what the law requires,” said Kim Jones, an employment lawyer at Seyferth Blumenthal & Harris in Kansas City. “So even if the 10th Circuit took that position, as an employer, as an enforcement agency, they (Kansas) could take the position that, no, we are going to treat people better  than the law would require.”

Schmidt made his remarks after Kansas joined a friend-of-the-court brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn another federal appeals court’s decision that it was illegal for a Michigan funeral home to fire an employee who was transitioning from male to female.

The employee, Aimee Stephens, had told the funeral home’s owner that she was a transgender woman and planned to dress as a woman. The owner, a devout Baptist who believed that God created males and females in the traditional biological sense, said that was unacceptable and terminated her.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued on Stephens’ behalf but the case was dismissed. On appeal, the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, finding that gender identity discrimination is a form of sex discrimination prohibited under Title VII.

Kansas and the other states argue in their brief that the Sixth Circuit decision “erases all common, ordinary understandings of the term ‘sex’ in Title VII and expands it to include ‘gender identity’ and ‘transgender’ status.”

“In doing so,” says the brief, “the lower court rewrites Title VII in a way never intended or implemented by Congress” when it passed Title VII as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Jones said that while the 10th Circuit found that Title VII’s protection against sex discrimination does not extend to transgender individuals, many lawyers have managed to get around that by arguing that their transgender clients were discriminated against because they did not conform to gender stereotypes.

“And that is a form of sex discrimination that has been recognized by virtually all of the circuits, including the 10th. So nothing about that (2007) opinion would have necessitated Schmidt to do what he did,” Jones said.

“And, in fact, even in enforcing the laws for which his office is responsible, he could take the position that this is about sex stereotyping and that a transgender person should be protected because this is a form of sex discrimination.”

Schmidt told reporters that even if the Supreme Court finds that the firing of Stephens was illegal, “that still saves the state money because we don’t have, potentially, years of litigation sorting it out in the appeals courts.”

“Obviously, I’m going to advocate on the side of both federal and state as it’s applied in Kansas,” Schmidt said. “I’m not going to arbitrarily choose a different position, but I think as the state’s lawyer, the interest I’m trying to protect is in minimizing the state’s litigation risk, getting an answer, moving on with the least amount of hassle.”

“At the end of the day,” he added, “I’ve got to do my job.”

Dan Margolies is a senior reporter and editor in conjunction with the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @DanMargolies

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Washington, D.C.,-based nonprofit donated $3 million during the weekend to a political action committee supporting an effort to increase Missouri’s minimum wage to $12 an hour.

The Sixteen Thirty Fund, a dark money nonprofit that isn’t required to reveal its donors, donated $500,000 last year and $500,000 in May to a PAC called Raise Up Missouri. That group collected signatures to put the minimum wage question on the November ballot.

The Kansas City Star reports the $3 million is the largest single contribution in the last two years.

If approved, the state’s minimum wage would be gradually increased from $7.85 to $12 an hour.

Supporters of U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, are hoping the issue will increase her chances in a tight race for re-election.