The 2025 Kentucky General Assembly concluded its short, 30-day session at 4:40 pm on Friday, March 28.
This year, we put forth a piece of legislation aimed at helping caregivers who face incarceration, and we continued our defensive efforts to minimize the impact of bad legislation.
As we anticipated, attacks on LGBTQ Kentuckians continued, mirroring National attacks on queer communities and transgender people. Also as expected, legislators followed anti-intellectual, racist examples across the country and passed legislation that will harm colleges and post-secondary institutions and, ultimately, make Kentucky and unwelcoming place for some of the brightest minds in the country.
CRIMINAL LAW REFORM: The Family Preservation Act
Last session, lawmakers passed House Bill 5, which criminalized homelessness and enacted a spate of other regressive, Draconian laws that will ultimately set Kentucky back decades and contribute to the prison overcrowding crisis in the commonwealth. So, in 2025, our Advocacy Team worked to craft legislation to help ease overcrowding in jails and prisons, while simultaneously giving Kentuckians a chance to improve their lives and support their families.
House Bill 291 and its companion in the Senate SB 118, the Family Preservation and Accountability Act, is a solutions-focused policy that addresses the root causes of crime. The bill is modeled on legislation from other states that provides community-based alternatives to prison and/or jail to prioritize safety while keeping families together.
This bill encourages the use of community-based alternatives including, but not limited to:
- therapy
- case management
- recovery services
- vocational and educational services
- job training
and more for Kentuckians who are parenting minor children and convicted of low-level drug and property crimes.
Community-based alternatives continue to require parents to face the consequences of their conviction but reduce the impact on Kentucky kids.
The bill had strong bipartisan support this year and passed out of committee and the full House unanimously! We will take this momentum into the interim and return in 2026 to get the bill across the finish line.
We also continued our efforts to pass Clean Slate legislation in Kentucky, to ensure that Kentuckians who have earned a second chance have a fair opportunity to work, get an education, and achieve their full potential.
While we were not successful in securing a bill sponsor for clean slate this year, our team pivoted to lobbying for a resolution to create a bipartisan taskforce in the interim session.
REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM: Freestanding Birth Centers and Last-Minute Additions
Kentucky remains a forced pregnancy state, and we’ll never stop fighting to restore abortion access in the commonwealth. But lawmakers have made it clear that they will continue to ignore the will of the voters, who overwhelmingly voiced their support for abortion access at the ballot box in 2022 and allow Kentucky’s dangerous abortion bans to continue.
Throughout the 30-day session, a bill allowing freestanding birthing centers to operate throughout the commonwealth had strong bipartisan support. Birthing centers, distinct from hospitals and private residences, are designed to provide care during labor, delivery, the immediate postpartum period, and for newborns immediately following delivery. House Bill 90 moved through the legislative process with strong bipartisan support and would have improved maternal and infant health outcomes for thousands of Kentuckians, particularly those in rural Kentucky and counties without access to an OB/GYN.
Unfortunately, at the 11th hour, lawmakers attached another piece of legislation to HB 90 and rushed the bill to the Governor’s desk in less than 24 hours, with no input from the public and while disregarding testimony from OB/GYNs who opposed the bill. The added language claims to “clarify” when abortion is allowed under the current bans but appears to further confuse the issue for some medical providers and in some instances.
The governor vetoed the bill, but the legislation overrode his veto, and the bill will become law. The ACLU of Kentucky continues the fight to restore abortion access in the commonwealth in the courts, as we move forward with litigation in Poe v Coleman. Mary Poe, a brave Kentuckian who needed abortion care but could not access it in her home state, stepped forward to represent the people of the commonwealth who need access to a full spectrum of reproductive care. The case is pending before Jefferson County Circuit Court.
FREE SPEECH
Several bills threatening freedom of speech and expression passed the General Assembly this year, increasing goverment overreach and attempting to police thought.
House Joint Resolution 15 passed and became law without the Governor's signature. This resolution will mandate the display of a 10 Commandments monument on government property, despite the Kentucky Supreme Court already ruling that there is no secular legislative purpose for such a display in 1980.
Senate Bill 19 mandates a "moment of silence" in public schools across Kentucky, and could be interpreted as forcing prayer in a public institutions. The Governor vetoed the bill, but the legislature overrode his veto.
House Bill 399 criminalizes protest within the Kentucky State Capitol grounds if it is claimed to “prevent or otherwise interfere with legislative process,” and includes felony charges. The Governor's veto was overriden and this bill will become law.
RESISTANCE: Defending Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Initiatives & LGBTQ+ Rights
In the 2025 Kentucky General Assembly, attacks on marginalized communities became more focused and frequent than ever before. These attempts to deny already oppressed groups of their dignity, access to education, healthcare, and more will not be allowed to take hold without a fight.
House Bill 4, sponsored by Representative Jennifer Decker (who claimed her white father was a slave in remarks to the NAACP last year), strips Kentucky’s postsecondary institutions of their diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, leaving the commonwealth unwelcoming to students from marginalized communities and widening gaps in equitable access to education that took decades to fill with diversity initiatives and affirmative action. This is not representative of Kentucky values or the values of our educational institutions. The Governor vetoed the bill, but the legislature overrode his veto when they returned to session.
House Bill 495, sponsored by Representative David Hale, was originally put forward to reverse an executive order banning the practice of “conversion therapy,” a well-known form of torture used on LGBTQ+ youth, which attempts to separate them from their identities by force. This cruel practice was banned by Kentucky’s governor just months before the Kentucky General Assembly (KYGA) to protect children across the Commonwealth from this pseudoscientific form of child abuse.
However, in the final days of KYGA, a bill that disallows the use of Medicaid funding to access Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) – the standard of care used to treat gender dysphoria – was added as an amendment to HB 495. After passing the House and Senate, Governor Andy Beshear publicly vetoed HB 495 at the Fairness Dinner on March 22nd, 2025. The legislature overrode the Governor's veto, and the bill will become law, leaving thousands of trans Kentuckians without the ability to pay for their medically necessary care. The Governor vetoed HB 495 live at the Fairness Dinner, but lawmakers also overrode that action.
In another attack on trans Kentuckians, specifically, Senate Bill 2 was introduced by Senator Mike Wilson as a high priority bill for the Kentucky GOP. This bill prohibits the use of public funds for hormone replacement therapy historically provided to incarcerated individuals. Denying people who are incarcerated in Kentucky medically necessary care is a cruel violation of Kentucky’s constitution, which guarantees healthcare deemed medically necessary by their physicians, to all incarcerated individuals in the state's custody.
Additionally, research shows that forced detransition causes deep physical and emotional pain up-to and including death by suicide, none of which the Kentucky General Assembly has put forth policy to address before disrupting already tense dynamics in Kentucky’s state and county carceral facilities. Lawmakers continue to legislate issues they don't understand, resulting in laws based on fear and ignorance. Further, some legislators flatly refuse to be educated on topics with which they have no experience leading to bills like the three we have outlined here.
These bills are firmly rooted in pseudoscience and ignorance, do nothing to serve Kentucky taxpayers, constituents, or those who have landed in Kentucky to serve out a sentence in the carceral system. Laws like this will cost taxpayers far more than they will save, in litigation and the cost of treating people who are denied the care they need. The time to leave draconian laws in the dust has long passed, but if the Kentucky General Assembly continues to pass antiquated and cruel legislation, we will continue to resist.
ORGANIZING: Smart Justice Advocates, Mini Lobby Days, and The Family Preservation and Accountability Act
The Kentucky General Assembly is an all-hands-on-deck annual event where we bring together our expert policy team, organizers, communications experts, and dedicated volunteers to provide Kentucky with boots-on-the-ground support to fight unjust legislation.
Members of our advocacy team work to coordinate and support volunteers from across the state as they converge on the Kentucky state Capitol to add their own lived experiences to the conversation. This contextualization is essential to advance person-centered legislation like the Family Preservation and Accountability Act.
During the 2025 Legislative Session the ACLU-KY Smart Justice Advocates participated in three mini-lobby days, where they attended 17 meetings with legislators and secured several “yes” votes and a sponsorship for our priority legislation, and hosted a Legislative Action Night, where dozens of volunteers learned how to connect with their legislators and maximize their impact on how laws are made in Kentucky.
We also co-hosted press conferences, rallies, and supported testimony from our partner organizations and the volunteers they brought to the Capitol to educate lawmakers on the issues impacting their lives.
WHAT’S NEXT?
While the legislative session is over until next year, the work of protecting Kentuckians’ civil liberties never stops, and we rely on our partners and volunteers to help us with our advocacy and legislative work year-round.
- SIGN UP: Join our statewide Reproductive Freedom Project campaign.
- SHOW UP: Stay up to date by following our events page.
- GIVE: Donate to help us keep up the fight. Any amount helps.
We’re grateful to all who helped us protect Kentuckians’ civil liberties. We do this work for you, and we can’t do it without you.