New Kentucky laws are here, y’all.
Kentucky’s state legislature passed around 200 new laws earlier this year during the 2026 legislative session, touching on everything from gun access to “school choice” to the next two-year state budget.
Unless a law is labeled as an emergency—meaning it goes into effect immediately—or otherwise has a specific start date, new laws go into effect 90 days after the end of the legislative session. This year, that’s July 15.
Hellbender Newsroom combed through all of this year’s new laws to see which ones are most essential for Kentuckians to know about. Here are some of the new state laws to take note of.
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Education
House Bill 1: Allows Kentucky to participate in a federal scholarship tax credit program that gives tax credits to people who donate to private school scholarships and other qualified education-focused programs.
Senate Bill 263: Makes it easier for public school districts to bring in private managers to oversee schools.
Senate Bill 2: Says school administrators’ pay raises cannot outpace those for classroom teachers.
Senate Bill 1: Shifts power from the Jefferson County Public Schools’ school board to the superintendent, and tries to provide a legal justification for why the law, an identical measure of which was ruled unconstitutional in December, should stand. (A separate bill shrinking and recreating the JCPS school board has already gone into effect.)
Senate Bill 101: Requires schools expel students in sixth grade and above for at least a year if they intentionally physically injure—or attempt to injure—an educator. There are exceptions for students with disabilities.
House Bill 253: Strengthens how Kentucky handles cases of educator misconduct, including banning school districts from using NDAs to cover up misconduct involving minors. (It also changes how schools teach kids to read.)
Crime and safety
Senate Bill 104: Makes it a crime to interfere with first responders—including ICE agents.
House Bill 4: Makes it a crime to “groom” a minor.
House Bill 366: Expands Kentucky’s child sexual abuse material law to criminalize computer-generated explicit images.
Senate Bill 251: Makes it easier for the state department of corrections to implement protocols around execution, potentially making it easier for Kentucky to restart its use of the death penalty.
House Bill 58: Places limits on automatic license plate readers, like Flock cameras, and requires much of their data to be deleted after 90 days.
House Bill 189: Prohibits being physically stationary in spaces like sides of the road or in the median, effectively taking aim at panhandling.
Gun access
House Bill 312: Drops the concealed carry age from 21 to 18.
House Bill 78: Restricts lawsuits against gun manufacturers and sellers.
Gaming
House Bill 904: Makes several changes to Kentucky’s gaming laws, including raising the minimum age for sports betting from 18 to 21 and blocking those who owe child support from betting.
Natural disasters
Senate Bill 153: Adds protections for homeowners against fraudulent and predatory contractors following a natural disaster or severe weather event.
Senate Bill 11: Creates a pilot program to help homeowners build emergency storm shelters.
Housing
House Bill 333: Allows faith-based organizations to build small amounts of affordable housing nearby.
State symbols
Senate Bill 19: Makes the indigo milk cap the official state mushroom.
Senate Bill 37: Names the Treeing Walker Coonhound the official state dog breed, shelter and rescue pets the official state pet, the eastern spotted skunk the official state nongame mammal, and the eastern hellbender (hey, that’s us!) the official state amphibian.
