Lawmakers move to strip Kentucky human rights commissions of power to enforce law

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Kentucky lawmakers are moving a bill to strip power from the state and local human rights commissions that enforce civil rights law for the public, instead directing aggrieved people to hire lawyers and file lawsuits.

“The reason that I am proposing this is I believe that the right to a jury trial, which is enshrined in the Kentucky Constitution and enshrined in our Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, is the appropriate forum for these complaints,” the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Daniel Elliott, R-Danville, said Wednesday.

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved House Bill 468.

Elliott initially described his bill to the committee as an effort to update the Kentucky Civil Rights Act so that it reflects new language used in the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

The bill does that.

It also — as Elliott acknowledged when questioned — would severely erode the authority of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights and the 22 local human rights commissions in places like Lexington, Louisville, Richmond, Berea, Frankfort, Paris, Danville and Georgetown.

“I think, through my reading of this bill, essentially all the teeth that our agency has is gone,” testified Raymond Sexton, executive director of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission.

The Rev. Donzella Lee, director of the Franklin-Simpson Human Rights Commission, cautioned lawmakers against “watering down” the rights of local citizens.

“Local human rights commissions are where we protect and preserve our civil rights,” Lee said. “It is our job that we take very seriously in our own communities, and keeping that responsibility within our commissions means we maintain local control of our laws and our ordinances.”

What HB 468 would do

The bill would remove the adjudicative powers of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights — the agency’s legal authority to hear evidence and resolve disputes — on discrimination complaints related to employment and access to public accommodations.

Parties involved in a housing discrimination complaint could demand a jury trial in circuit court rather than having the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights handle it internally.

“The Kentucky Human Rights Commission would still be able to initiate litigation on behalf of a complainant if they thought that was necessary,” Elliott explained. “So I just think the appropriate forum is the courts and not an administrative agency.”

And yet, the bill would prohibit the state human rights commission from recovering its own legal fees and court costs if it did go to court on behalf of a person claiming housing discrimination, said Colt Sells, the commission’s general counsel.

“I personally don’t see the justification to treat government plaintiffs any different than private ones,” Sells told the committee. “I think doing so may create an uneven playing field for aggrieved persons that opt to file with us, or for those that are required to file with us due to the barriers to access to the courts.”

The bill would allow local human rights commissions to keep existing. But it would remove their authority to subpoena documents or compel testimony when people didn’t want to cooperate with an investigation. Nor would the local agencies be able to issue remedial orders to resolve a complaint.

“They said we can still investigate, but nobody has any incentive to listen to us or do what we say,” Sexton told the Herald-Leader before the hearing. “It’s like telling a cop, ‘Yeah, you can still enforce the law if you want, but you can’t arrest anybody, and you can’t carry a gun, but sure, go ahead.’”

How the rights commissions work

Human rights commissions started to appear in the United States in the 1940s, at first to address racial and religious discrimination.

As civil rights were strengthened over the next few decades by the federal courts and Congress, and even local governments, the commissions took on a wider variety of cases. In Kentucky, people are protected on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability and, in some contexts, age and family status.

About two dozen Kentucky communities, including Lexington and Louisville, also have “fairness ordinances” that prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ people, which their local human rights commissions can act on. There is no statewide fairness law.

The agencies allow citizens to file a complaint for free, without having to hire a lawyer, and ask for remedial action to be taken against their employer, their landlord, a local business or some other party who allegedly violated their civil rights.

In Lexington, for example, a restaurant last year was fined $25,000 by the local human rights commission for discriminating against a disabled Navy veteran over the presence of her service dog.

Unlike a lawsuit, where the plaintiff’s attorney gets a share of money won, a person who is awarded money by a human rights commission gets to keep all of it, Sexton told the Herald-Leader. And the agencies also tend to move faster than the courts, where proceedings and appeals can drag on for many years, he said.

In its most recent annual report, the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights said that in 2025, it saw a total of 315 discrimination cases filed involving employment, housing, public accommodation and financial transactions.

The state agency said it closed 202 discrimination cases overall last year through a combination of mediations, settlements, withdrawals and other outcomes.

In recent years, there has been a push in different states to weaken or eliminate human rights commissions. The Tennessee Human Rights Commission was closed last year, its duties going to the state attorney general. In New Hampshire, lawmakers proposed zeroing out that state’s Human Rights Commission after a bad audit.

Lawmaker: Take it to court

On Kentucky’s House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, state Rep. Jason Nemes said he prefers to see people take their grievances to court, not to a state agency.

The Kentucky Commission on Human Rights is overseen by 11 commissioners appointed by the governor, few of whom are lawyers or offer much legal experience, Nemes said. Unless both sides in a civil rights complaint agree to have their case decided by the commission, then he objects to the current process, he said.

“It’s not a judge that we’ve elected, and who is a lawyer and has been through all the requirements to be experienced and qualified,” said Nemes, R-Middletown. “There’s none of that on the commission. Yet you are entering what’s really a judicial order.”

“There’s no jury,” Nemes added. “I have a right to a jury, and so I don’t agree with any of it.”

The House committee voted 16-to-0 in favor of the bill, with three members voting “pass.”

“I’m concerned that the federal government’s Human Rights Commission has been gutted. Now we’re gutting this commission,” said state Rep. Pamela Stevenson, D-Louisville, one of three who voted to pass. “So where do people go who have no money and no ability to navigate the system?”

_____