GOP-backed bill would slash KY environmental rules amid Trump deregulatory push
Senate Republicans are advancing legislation that would severely restrict Kentucky regulators from setting environmental policies by tying them directly to bare-minimum standards at the federal level — a move critics say threatens to permanently rebalance power in Frankfort.
The Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee cleared a bill along a strict, party-line vote Wednesday that would prohibit state agencies, like the Energy and Environment Cabinet or Cabinet for Health and Family Services, from issuing environmental rules “more stringent or extensive” than similar U.S. government rulemaking.
Agencies would also be required to jump through narrower scientific and technical hoops to rule on issues federal bureaucrats have not addressed.
In effect, the bill would neuter Kentucky’s environmental administrative power by subjugating state policy to the will of federal agencies actively mounting an environmental deregulatory push under President Donald Trump’s administration.
It is the GOP’s boldest attempt yet to tether state environmental policy to the federal government and comes just a year after the legislature curbed state surface water pollution rules by limiting the definition of protected waterways to those already named by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The bill will go to the Senate floor for a vote, where at least two Republicans on the committee Wednesday said they would like to see amendments safeguarding against blatant deregulatory abuse.
“We don’t need to back to the days or rivers catching on fire and everything like that,” Sen. Phillip Wheeler, R-Pikeville, said. “To say that there’s not been some abuses by industries throughout the decades would just be, you know ... frankly, it would just be a lie.”
State deregulatory standards abound
Republican lawmakers appear eager to defer state environmental decision-making to the federal government while tensions mount between states and the feds.
“Sound science is not political,” said Mark Behrens, a Washington lawyer and lobbyist testifying Wednesday on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Kentucky Chamber. “This is not a Republican bill. It’s not a Democrat bill. The science is the science, and our position is: let the science dictate the policy, and that’s what this bill is doing.”
Since early last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has reversed the scientific conclusion underpinning the Clean Air Act that greenhouse gasses threaten public health, weakened vehicle emission standards and actively promoted fossil fuels, such as coal, over environmentally friendly fuels.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice under Trump has filed lawsuits against states including Hawaii, Michigan, New York and Vermont over state-level Superfund laws attempting to hold fossil fuel companies liable for climate change impacts.
The bill that cleared the Kentucky Senate committee Wednesday is almost identical to legislation the Alabama legislature passed just last week, forcing the state’s environmental regulators to prove a “direct causal link” between exposure to harmful emissions and “manifest bodily harm” to humans.
Tennessee lawmakers also passed a law last year seeking direct links to “manifest bodily harm in humans.” Similar legislation is on the docket in Utah.
Conservative policymaking groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council and American for Prosperity have taken aim at state-level environmental standards by claiming patchwork regulation harms corporations that do business in multiple states. Those measures would eliminate the cooperative federalism method for allocating environmental regulatory powers that has left states like California with some of the toughest standards nationwide.
Behrens, a longtime adviser to ALEC and a former chair of its civil justice task force, has been called to testify in several state legislatures promoting pro-business deregulation. He told members of the committee Wednesday that “businesses just can’t operate” when 50 states “are all trying to do their own thing.” The bill would also create confidence in regulatory decisions, he added.
Opponents cite human health risks
Opponents of Kentucky Senate Bill 178 say the rigorous scientific justifications state regulators would have to provide to issue rules that go beyond federal regulations and are specific to Kentucky’s environmental needs are “unworkable.”
It would limit the state’s authority to issue drinking water protections, prevent dumping hazardous materials and standardize sewage treatment, while lead poisoning and radiation controls go unchecked, said Audrey Ernstberger, an associate attorney for the Kentucky Resources Council, a leading public-interest environmental law and advocacy group.
By forcing regulators to directly link diagnosable diseases with murky and hard-to-distinguish environmental risks, polluters can get away with more, she said. Regulators would have to stand by while people become sick, injured or die, reversing proactive and precautionary regulatory philosophy.
“This replaces the precautionary principles with a body-count requirement,” she said. “This is not clarity. This is uncertainty, and this causes regulatory paralyses at moments where public health protection is critical.”
Direct causal links are rare, said Erin Haynes, a professor of preventive medicine and environmental health at the University of Kentucky. Research develops associations or relationships between diseases and individual pollutants.
“We can’t look at a chemical and say, ‘You did it,’” she said. “It doesn’t come with a bar code and say exactly where it came from. We can’t. There’s no way, so that terminology ... it doesn’t work.”
The bill also prioritizes site-specific data when determining whether a proposed regulation meets a “best available science” standard, throwing out mountains of evidence from researchers in other U.S. states that may be dealing with similar environmental hazards, Haynes said.
Some Kentucky law is tied to federal regulation
The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Greg Elkins, R-Winchester, told the committee his legislation is based on existing statutes that limit state agencies from rampant rulemaking.
Kentucky already requires regulations that are issued under federal requirements to “be no more stringent than the federal law or regulations.”
Basing state regulations off of the federal statutes or rules that prompted them is a basic tenant of Kentucky administrative law for decades, said Lloyd “Rusty” Cress Jr., a state lobbyist testifying on behalf of the Kentucky Chemistry Council, American Chemistry Council and Kentucky Association of Manufacturers.
Elkins’ bill would require state regulators to make their rules easy for companies to comply with, something federal rules are supposed to do but don’t always achieve, Cress said.
“The federal government loves to have programs that are technology forcing,” he said. “They impose requirements that not a lot of people can do right now, and they’re trying to force you to be able to do it within a certain timeframe. Regulations in Kentucky under this will have to be technologically achievable. It makes perfect sense.”
Elkins said he wants to protect Kentucky businesses from falling victim to “increasing public attention” and “fast-developing media coverage” about new chemicals entering the market, “and their potential for perceived impact on human health and the environment.”
That could cause some state agencies to “hastily adopt costly regulations driven by unfounded fears or flimsy science, rather than rigorous scientific studies and literature,” he said.
“This act says to businesses in Kentucky, ‘We are open for business,’” Elkins added.
This story was originally published February 25, 2026 at 1:20 PM.
