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Nearly a year after it upheld a law that would have opened a path for the General Assembly to impose laws on a single Kentucky locale or entity, the Kentucky Supreme Court has reversed itself and declared the law unconstitutional.
In a 4-3 ruling issued Thursday morning, the high court overturned a 2022 law that would at present only apply to Jefferson County Public Schools based on certain specific criteria spelled out in the legislation.
The 2022 law passed by the legislature’s Republican supermajority would have shifted power from the elected school board to the appointed superintendent. The attorney for the school board, David Tachau, argued that if the court’s original ruling stood, it could pave the way for lawmakers to widely use “special legislation,” or narrow state legislation that impacts a county or city and is prohibited under the Kentucky Constitution.
Matthew Kuhn, solicitor general in the state attorney general’s office, argued declaring the law unconstitutional could have broad implications, such as undoing the laws that allow merged city-county governments in Lexington and Louisville.
Before Justice Pamela Goodwine joined the court this year, the Supreme Court narrowly ruled last December to allow the law to stand. In April, the court agreed to rehear the case at the school board’s request. Oral arguments were held again in August.
Justice Angela McCormick Bisig wrote in the majority opinion that justices were not saying “that the General Assembly may never enact legislation addressed to only one particular type of county or form of county government, but rather only that it cannot do so unreasonably.” She was joined by Justices Michelle Keller, Kelly Thompson and Goodwine.
In the majority opinion, Bisig said the ruling is not a commentary on the legislature’s policy. “Oour limited duty is solely to consider whether the statute complies with or violates the Kentucky Constitution.” By her analysis, the law is not in line with the state Constitution.
“Today we remain both steadfast in our strict observance of the separation of powers and mindful of our duty of judicial modesty to respect the acts of the General Assembly and afford them the presumption of constitutionality they deserve,” Bisig wrote. “Nonetheless, we also cannot allow this modesty to blind us to our solemn obligation to safeguard the rights of the citizens of this Commonwealth to government in conformity with the limitations set forth in our Constitution.”
Bisig also defended the court’s authority to rehear the case, knowing that it would “be easy fodder for those unhappy with today’s decision to argue it is due to nothing more than a change in the composition of this Court.”
“The present case involves allegations of unreasonable disparate treatment of the largest school district in the Commonwealth,” she wrote. “It is a matter of statewide interest as it relates not only to a reduction of the Jefferson County Board of Education’s powers, but also a denial to every other public school superintendent in the Commonwealth of extra powers afforded to the Jefferson County superintendent. It is thus a matter of significant concern to all citizens of the Commonwealth, as it fundamentally affects the governance of public schools and thus the education of Kentucky’s children.”
In the dissenting opinion, Justice Shea Nickell criticized the decisions to rehear the case, saying the new court “has taken result oriented decision-making and disregard of well-established procedural rules to a new level of ‘judicial fog.’” He wrote that the school board had ample opportunity to make its case during the original proceedings and the previous court duly applied the law. Chief Justice Debra Lambert and Deputy Chief Justice Robert Conley joined Nickell’s opinion.
Nickell wrote that some may chalk the new decision up to “glib political maxims, such as ‘elections have consequences.’”
“However, such excuses conveniently ignore that, within our government’s three-branched framework, stated broadly, legislative bodies are elected to enact laws aimed at pursuing chosen public policy goals and executive officers are elected to execute and enforce enacted laws to administer and achieve adopted public policy objectives, while judicial courts — however chosen — are restricted to interpreting and administering enacted laws and determining their constitutional legitimacy absent review concerning the wisdom or correctness of underlying public policy,” Nickell wrote. “As a result, the American legal tradition has long recognized that legislators and executive officers are ultimately accountable to the people while judges and justices are ultimately accountable to the law.”
Justices, particularly Goodwine, faced new pressure once they signaled the case would be heard again this year. Goodwine’s campaign for Supreme Court received support from Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and his political action committee. She was elected in November 2024.
In October, a Louisville attorney and GOP official, Jack Richardson, filed a petition with the clerk of the Kentucky House calling for Goodwine’s impeachment for not recusing herself from the case. According to a report from Louisville Public Media, Richardson said it was improper for Goodwine to rule on the case after an independent political action committee heavily funded by the Louisville teachers’ union backed ads to help elect her in 2024.
A high ranking member of House GOP leadership and Louisville lawmaker, Majority Whip Rep. Jason Nemes, wrote an op-ed for the Louisville Courier Journal in August saying that the court’s ruling would “not only determine the future of Jefferson County’s schools but could also unravel critical local policies that benefit urban, suburban and rural communities.”
Last month, when Lambert appeared before a legislative committee to make budget requests of the General Assembly, Nemes emphasized how different JCPS is from other Kentucky school districts as it is the largest school district in the state. Nemes added that “anybody who would say that we must treat JCPS the same as we treat Robertson County, which has 3,000 people in the entire county, I don’t think is understanding the real world.”
Goodwine and Conley were present at the meeting, seated in the crowd.
Reacting to the Thursday decision, Republican Attorney General Russell Coleman said in a statement he was “stunned that our Supreme Court reversed itself based only a new justice joining the Court.”
“This decision is devastating for JCPS students and leaves them trapped in a failing system while sabotaging the General Assembly’s rescue mission,” Coleman added.
This story will be updated.
This article appears in Dec. 1-31, 2025.