These 9 high-impact Kentucky bills could withstand a veto from Gov. Andy Beshear

FRANKFORT, Ky. — They weren’t the final days of the legislative session in Frankfort, but in many ways they might as well have been.

Over the course of the last week, the GOP-led General Assembly moved fast to pass priority legislation on topics including flood relief, higher education and abortion.

Although the legislature doesn’t adjourn until March 28, Friday was the last day for bills to pass with time for the legislature to override a veto from Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear.

Beshear has not vetoed any bills as of 1:30 a.m. Saturday, but is widely expected to reject several pieces of Republican priority legislation, as he has in years past.

So many legislators, who have made it a joyous routine to override Beshear’s vetoes with their four-to-one majorities in the House and Senate, scurried Thursday and Friday to grant their bills final passage.

Dozens were passed in the final days, but these 9 bills stand out for their wide-ranging effect on the commonwealth and its citizens.

—House Bill 6: Limiting Executive Branch regulations

This year’s marquee anti-regulation legislation, House Bill 6, would block executive branch agencies like the Energy & Environment Cabinet from taking action that isn’t explicitly authorized by the Kentucky General Assembly if it costs more than $500,000 over two years.

Republicans framed it as an important step to combat government overreach and to assert the legislature’s authority. One legislative leader said it makes clear that the legislature is “the most powerful branch of government.”

“It is about a reset to make sure and remove all doubt that the most powerful branch of government is the branch that has the most elected people in it — that power that this country was founded on is spread across 138 individuals,” GOP House Majority Floor Leader Steven Rudy previously said.

Cabinet heads under Beshear spoke out against the bill.

Although sponsor Rep. Wade Williams, a Republican, said he only believes six current regulations would be nixed by the bill, Energy and Environment Cabinet Secretary Rebecca Goodman wrote that the $500,000 would apply to “the majority of regulations promulgated by the Cabinet.”

Public Protection Cabinet Secretary Ray Perry also had concerns.

“Although HB 6 accounts for emergent issues related to the public health, safety, and welfare, (it does) not address expensive but slow-developing problems that still require timely regulatory intervention. Such issues include, but are not limited to: new financial industry risks, food safety concerns, and environmental contamination,” Perry wrote.

The bill passed with unanimous GOP support in both chambers. Just one Democrat, Sen. Robin Webb, voted in favor.

—House Bill 544: Flood relief cap lift

The effects of last month’s historic flooding in both parts of the state will be felt for years, especially in Eastern Kentucky, which was still recovering from even worse flooding in 2022.

House Bill 544, from GOP House Appropriations & Revenue Chair Jason Petrie, responds to a long-held concern from Beshear: that the legislature barred him from accessing needed disaster funds during the last budget cycle. The bill would raise the $50 million cap over the current two-year period on such emergency spending to $100 million.

The bill also allows $48 million left over from a previous emergency response fund to be carried over into a new one created by the bill.

Beshear called the bill “not nearly enough” to respond to potential future emergencies and recover from the last one, but said he intends to sign it.

—House Bill 424: Tenure changes

House Bill 424 from GOP Rep. James Tipton would require public colleges and universities to implement a performance evaluation system that critics have said could threaten the role of tenure in Kentucky higher education.

The bill would require public university presidents and faculty members to undergo a performance evaluation at least once every four years.

It gives schools the ability to fire employees who fail to meet “performance and productivity” standards, and applies to all public universities and the Kentucky Community and Technical College System.

Tipton has repeatedly said the bill is “not about tenure,” but about giving universities the ability to remove under-performing employees.

—House Bill 208: No cellphones in classrooms

Although a similar bill didn’t cross the finish line last year, GOP Rep. Josh Bray’s House Bill 208 sailed through both chambers with bipartisan cheer this time around.

Bray’s bill cracks down on cellphone use in Kentucky’s K-12 public schools.

The bill would require all school districts in Kentucky to adopt a policy that would, at a minimum, prohibit the use of cellphones during instructional school hours except in the case of emergencies. It also would prohibit social media from being accessed on school devices.

Although some Democrats did not like the idea last year, comments on the floor showed a growing bipartisan consensus around the issue.

“Every state that has passed this bill has seen an improvement in education, an improvement in student development and improvement in student-teacher relations, and improving student student relations, a lessening and a weakening bullying, harassment, suicide, mental health,” Sen. Reggie Thomas, a Democrat, said.

“This is the best bill that we’re going to pass in 2025.”

—Senate Bill 89: Relaxing pollution restrictions in Kentucky waterways

Presented as a means of “protecting” business and development groups from “unnecessary red tape,” Senate Bill 89 benefits the coal industry and other polluters by making it easier to contaminate water sources without getting in trouble.

The bill from GOP Sen. Scott Madon reduces Kentucky Division of Water’s regulatory authority by narrowing the definition of protected waters in order to mirror a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision that weakened the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to enforce the federal Clean Water Act. It has the backing of the Kentucky Coal Association.

Environmentalists, including the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, say it has high potential to imperil Kentucky’s drinking water.

—House Bill 90: Freestanding birthing centers, “clarity” abortion ban

In a committee substitute Wednesday, two days before the veto period began, Republicans added and attempted to clarify statutory language in the bill to give doctors more leeway in treating patients with severe pregnancy complications, including “medically necessary” abortions.

The bill from GOP Rep. Jason Nemes also clarifies that doctors who make these decisions using their “reasonable medical judgment” would not be subject to a criminal penalty.

“We wanted to make sure we’re protecting doctors making decisions to protect the patient,” Nemes said.

Doctors have demanded more clarity from Republicans since Kentucky enacted its strict abortion bans in 2022, which has up to this point included vague “life of the mother” exceptions.

Not all women who require medically-necessary abortions are immediately at risk of dying, but fear of being charged with a felony has pushed doctors to refer patients with nonviable pregnancies, for instance, out of state for that type of care.

Nemes presented the bill addition along with Republican Rep. Nancy Tate, Kentucky Right to Life Executive Director Addia Wuchner, and Dr. Jeffrey Goldberg, a gynecologic oncologist in Louisville and legislative advocacy chair for the Kentucky Chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, also helped draft the legislation.

Even though Goldberg said this latest provision will give providers greater autonomy in deciding how to treat their high-risk patients, most Democrats and reproductive rights advocates weren’t convinced. They said the bill didn’t go far enough in giving doctors more control, or in reinstating the right to elective abortion.

Tamarra Wieder, Kentucky director of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, accused Republicans of “trying to inject fake medical terminology in a desperate attempt to mask the deadly impact of their anti-abortion bans.”

—Senate Bill 19: Mandating a moment of silence, moral instruction in Kentucky schools

The original rendition of Senate Bill 19 from Sen. Rick Girdler, a Republican, requires public schools to facilitate a moment of silence each day, during which students would stay seated, undistracted, free to “exercise his or her individual choice to medicate, pray,” or any other silent activity that doesn’t interfere with other students, not to exceed two minutes.

Schools already have the option of offering a moment of silence each day. This bill makes it mandatory.

A late addition committee substitute to the bill also requires schools give students the option to travel off campus one hour each week to receive “moral instruction” with permission of their parents or guardians. The final version of the bill does not define what is considered moral instruction, but it requires districts to excuse those temporary absences.

Democrats took issue with the lack of definition for “moral instruction” and accused Republicans of making a veiled attempt to incorporate religion into public education.

The “definition of moral is what you believe to be right or wrong, and instruction is what someone tells you to do. I have a problem with that as a parent,” Webb, the Eastern Kentucky Democrat, said on the Senate floor Friday.

“We constantly in this body talk about not delegating and pushing more things down for our schools to do,” Republican Sen. Jimmy Higdon said before voting against the bill.

“I fundamentally disagree with forcing more things down on our schools to do. I’m all for prayer,” he said, “but we don’t need to mandate our schools do additional duties.”

—House Bills 196 & 398: Rolling back worker safety standards

House Bill 196 reduces the number of mine emergency technicians in coal mines from two to one. METs, trained and certified to provide basic medical care, must be present in coal mines when there are 10 or fewer miners working.

Opponents say it puts mine workers at greater risk in the event of an accident.

House Bill 398, championed by the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, shrinks the regulatory authority of the Kentucky Department of Workplace Standards, which monitors most private employers, so it mirrors the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Under the bill, Kentucky can’t adopt new workplace safety rules that are more strict than federal law, and state officials can’t enforce existing state standards more stringent than any federal provision enforced by OSHA.

The bill also establishes a “de minimis violation,” which is a violation that “has no direct or immediate relationship to safety or health.”

Kentucky Education and Labor Secretary Jamie Link said he has “grave concerns” about the measure.