State of Justice: January 2026 Ethics Update
In October 2025, a Louisville attorney who is also a local Republican Party official filed an impeachment petition against Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Pamela Goodwine. The complaint alleges that Goodwine should have recused herself from hearing an appeal before the court in April 2025 due to an alleged conflict of interest. The appeal asked the court to rehear a case it had decided in December 2024, which struck down a 2022 law enacted by the legislature to strip powers from the Jefferson County Board of Education and vest them instead with the district’s superintendent. Goodwine was elected to the court in November 2024 and took office on January 6, 2025, and is the first Black woman to serve on the Kentucky Supreme Court. She joined a majority of the court’s seven justices who decided to rehear the case in April 2025. The same majority invalidated the law in a December 2025 opinion.
The complaint against Goodwine alleged that she received significant financial support from the Kentucky Education Association, the Jefferson County Teachers Association, and political action committees linked to Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) during her 2024 campaign for a seat on the court, presenting an alleged conflict of interest that should have prompted her to recuse herself from hearing the petition to rehear the case and participating in the majority’s decision to overturn the December 2024 opinion. Richardson’s complaint against Goodwine did not elaborate on why contributions to Goodwine from the governor and the two teachers’ unions should require her to recuse herself from a case in which the Jefferson County Board of Education and the state’s former education commissioner were the only plaintiffs.
Lawmakers in the Kentucky House of Representatives formed a committee to consider the impeachment petition in early 2026. The General Assembly is required to consider such matters when they are submitted to the House by citizens, but had to wait until the beginning of the 2026 legislative session to take up the petition. The committee considering the impeachment petition against Goodwine comprises seven Republicans and four Democrats. If the committee determines that the petition has merit, it will advance it to a full vote by the Kentucky House of Representatives to approve articles of impeachment against Goodwine. If two-thirds of the Kentucky Senate then vote to convict Goodwine, she will be removed from the court. Goodwine asserted that the complaint is “deficient, meritless, and fails to justify any further impeachment inquiry” in a 27-page response that urged the committee to dismiss the impeachment petition. The activities of the 2026 Kentucky House Regular Session Impeachment Committee and the progress of the committee’s investigation into the complaint against Goodwine can be viewed here.
