Beshear: Law to remove Fayette school board chair is ‘a little crazy,’ understands lawsuit
Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear at a briefing Thursday said he was not surprised that Fayette County Board of Education Chair Tyler Murphy filed a lawsuit challenging a new Kentucky law aimed at removing Murphy from the board.
Beshear had vetoed the law in question earlier this year — Senate Bill 4. But the predominantly Republican General Assembly overruled that and passed the law.
The new law makes people ineligible from serving on a school board in a large district if they work a full-time job in another school district. Murphy is a teacher in Boyle County.
The law makes Murphy ineligible, but he still has filed to run for reelection and filed the lawsuit Tuesday against the state, arguing SB 4 is unconstitutional.
Both his activism with a teacher’s union and the school district’s financial problems have drawn the ire of Kentucky Republican lawmakers.
“I haven’t seen the lawsuit (against the state) but I’m not surprised by it,” Beshear said Thursday. “Long ago, we decided that we wanted education to be run by the community it’s in. That’s why we have a Fayette County Board of Education, or a Franklin County Board of Education.”
Beshear said when the General Assembly disagrees with local decision-making, it “likes to step in and just change the rules.“
“You can pass legislation that’s about education in general, but not target one community,” Beshear said.
Murphy’s lawsuit says that the Kentucky Supreme Court had “routinely invalidated” cases that target one community.
Beshear said the law tries to get a specific board member off of the Fayette County board, “which is definitely targeting one community, and it’s not the right way to use the statute.“
Beshear said the new law’s provision that an educator from another school district can’t serve on the Fayette County Public Schools’ board “seems a little crazy” because an educator would probably make a good school board member in a district other than own.
“We’ll monitor it as it goes,” Beshear said of Murphy’s lawsuit.
Reporter Hannah Pinski contributed to this story.
This story was originally published June 5, 2026 at 7:39 AM.