Kea S. Bird-Riley — Families, mediation and the bench

From a communications office to family court

Kea Bird-Riley earned her degree in communications at Mississippi College in 1998. She worked in marketing and public relations before earning her law degree at the University of Missouri–Kansas City in 2007. Her legal experience included a clerkship for Judge Charles E. Atwell, private practice at Stauffer & Nathan, and a staff attorney’s position with Jackson County CASA.

At Krigel & Krigel she represented families in adoptions, changes of custody and protective-order proceedings. She mediated family disputes and helped train guardians ad litem. Jackson County’s circuit judges appointed her commissioner of Division 41 on March 16, 2018. Her work there included the Family Drug Court. Governor Michael Parson appointed her associate circuit judge of Division 27 on December 23, 2020. Jackson County families thus met her first as an officer selected by the circuit judges and later as a judge appointed by the governor. The circuit’s Division 27 directory now lists a criminal assignment.

The tenant who reported a blocked drain

One of the decisions published with Bird-Riley’s 2026 judicial review concerns an apartment tenant. The written lease directed residents to report repairs through an online portal or deliver a request in writing. The tenant managed to report a backed-up bathtub through the portal. A maintenance employee then instructed him to report later problems directly. The portal itself was sometimes unavailable.

Whether the landlord knew of the defects mattered to the tenant’s claim. Bird-Riley set the portal entry beside testimony from a neighbor and a former employee, then set out her finding that the landlord had reasonable notice and had failed to restore the apartment to habitable condition. A reader assessing her work can follow the evidence from one recorded request to that finding, with the parties’ names omitted from the published opinion. The review committee recommended retention in 2026 and published three examples of her judicial writing.

What did the judge hear, what did she find, and what connected the two? The tenant’s repair request tells a Jackson County reader more about the exercise of judicial power than a list of professional memberships.

A local press can examine how an office works without speaking for the people who hold it. As a Mormon historian and litigant I value that liberty of expression, the protection of religious exercise and a community’s right to discuss its government.

Public records and sources