KY House amends bill on human rights commissions, still requires lawsuits
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- House Bill 468 forces human rights commissions to sue instead of administrative remedies.
- Amendment restores subpoena power for local commissions and allows fee recovery.
- Commissions must find probable cause and sue within 180 days after a complaint is filed.
The Kentucky House amended a bill on Wednesday to change how the state and local human rights commissions handle civil rights complaints for citizens.
House Bill 468 would prohibit the commissions from handling cases internally, with administrative remedies, as they have for decades. Instead, they would have to file lawsuits and go to court if their investigations determine that someone’s civil rights have been violated.
The House voted 72-to-22 to pass the bill and send it to the Senate, with no debate.
“The right to trial by jury is enshrined in Section 7 of the Kentucky Constitution and in the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and the appropriate forum for the adjudication of claims of discrimination is a court of justice and not an administrative agency,” said the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Daniel Elliott, R-Danville.
After concerns were raised about his bill in the House Judiciary Committee last month, Elliott filed a floor amendment to allow some changes requested by the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights and the 22 local human rights commissions in places like Lexington and Louisville.
In the amendment, Elliott agreed to let the state human rights commission recover legal fees and court costs if it successfully pursues litigation, something his bill originally did not allow.
And Elliott restored to the local human rights commissions their authority to investigate complaints by subpoenaing documents and compelling testimony from witnesses, powers the bill initially erased.
Elliott’s amended bill sets a firm deadline for the commissions to act. Respondents would get at least 20 days to reply in writing to a civil rights complaint, but the commissions must determine whether there is probable cause to pursue a complaint and then file a lawsuit within 180 days of receiving the complaint.
Officials at the various human rights commissions say it sometimes takes a month or more just to locate the appropriate respondent and get a written reply from them, at which point they are already 30 to 40 days into the process.
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 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.
