Judge allows subpoenas in Douglas County solar farm lawsuit
A judge let Grant Township subpoena planning commissioners, a move that could expose emails and texts behind the contested Kansas Sky Energy Center approval.
Douglas County District Judge James McCabria ruled Thursday that Grant Township may subpoena planning commissioners for records in its lawsuit over the Kansas Sky Energy Center, a 159-megawatt solar farm planned near Midland Junction. The decision gives opponents of the project a wider path to pursue emails, text messages and other material that could show how the county approved the project.
The lawsuit, filed in 2024 by Grant Township, affected property owners and local associations including the North Lawrence Improvement Association, seeks to undo county approval of the project. A temporary injunction is already blocking construction while the case continues. Opponents argue the county has not fully produced the records they need, especially communications involving planning commissioners, and they argue those documents could explain how the approval process unfolded.
Douglas County’s lawyers argued that county commissioners and planning commissioners serve different functions and that the requested records would not materially advance the plaintiffs’ claims. McCabria rejected that narrow view of the county’s internal process, saying the planning commissioners are the ones who make recommendations to county commissioners. That made their records relevant enough to reach through subpoenas, even though the planning commissioners were not originally named as parties in the case.
The ruling does not decide whether the solar project was properly approved, but it expands discovery in a case that has already slowed a major development tied to Evergy and Savion LLC. The Kansas Sky Energy Center is about 600 acres, and elsewhere about 1,105 acres, with the potential to generate enough electricity for about 30,000 homes. Journal-World reporting in December 2025 put the project’s value at about $234 million.
Douglas County commissioners extended the project’s conditional use permit by one year in March 2026, in a 4-1 vote, because the project had been unable to start construction while the lawsuit remained active. In October 2025, commissioners allowed limited environmental testing on the land in Grant Township despite the pending case, and later in 2026 they approved stormwater management and agrivoltaics plans.
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