The Kentucky Supreme Court once again heard arguments in a case challenging a law limiting the power of the Jefferson County Board of Education.

The Kentucky General Assembly passed Senate Bill 1 in 2022, moving certain powers from the school board to the superintendent.

The board sued, saying the law was unconstitutional because it singles out one school district for special legislation.

Last year, the court ruled 4 to 3 in favor of the law.

In April, the High Court withdrew the ruling and granted the school board's request for a rehearing.

Kentucky's office of the Attorney General defended the law at today's hearing, saying if Senate Bill one is overturned, the General Assembly would not be able to address problems that are specific only to certain parts of Kentucky.

They also said overturning Senate Bill one could have far reaching implications for other laws.

The lawyer for the Jefferson County Board of Education told the justices those arguments were, quote, fiction.

The idea of Senate Bill one, I think, is that in a consolidated local government that is so sprawling, like Jefferson County has 95,000 students, it's the third 30th largest school district in the country.

They want the buck to stop with one person.

They want one person to be able to creatively, decisively and immediately address issues in real time without having to go through sort of a multi-member board.

What we're concerned about is if the court says no, this is special legislation.

There's a lot of laws.

There are going to be imperiled that have been passed to benefit consolidated local governments, urban county governments that are unique to them.

They're class of one laws, and they're open in the very same way.

The Senate bill one is open.

The General Assembly is not going to be handcuffed at all.

And the world's not going to end if this court declares Senate Bill one to be unconstitutional.

That was exactly my my question to you.

You know, the Commonwealth of Kentucky is so diverse, from geographic to population, to social, and the problems in Jefferson County are so different from the problems in eastern Kentucky or western Kentucky.

If you don't allow, classification based, or population based classifications, how is the legislature going to do its job and address these problems?

Such as education, which is very important.

They don't have to do that.

And so in section one 5680 says there's not a problem.

What the General Assembly can't do, is go outside the notion of cities and classifications of cities and then start taking on the 27 or 28 specific subsections of section 59 and do special legislation there that's targeted to only one local, one person, one.

One situation.

The court did not make a ruling in the case.

Today's hearing was held in Lexington instead of the state Capitol building, where the Kentucky Supreme Court Chambers is located.

The state capitol building is undergoing renovations.

The court plans to meet around the state during that time.

And you can see the oral arguments made today in their entirety online at Wkyt.

Dot org.