Tis' shell bill season!
🦀🦀🦀
Y’all, phenomenal news: Kentucky lawmakers can no longer file new legislation in the 2026 legislative session!
We clocked in at just under 1,300 bills filed for #KYGA26, with about 939 coming from the House and around 354 coming from the Senate. (Just FYI, that does include a handful of bills that got withdrawn.)
And we’re seeing a ton of those bills start to move — either getting their first or second committee votes, finally seeing the light of day on the House or Senate floors, or slowly chipping away at their required three readings in either chamber.
Still, we’ve only had a few bills get sent to Gov. Andy Beshear’s desk, which isn’t surprising. The GOP supermajority really has until April 1 to pass anything they think Beshear could veto so they then have enough time to override those vetoes.
One big one waiting for Beshear’s decision rn: House Bill 1, the Plan C of the GOP’s push for “school choice” in Kentucky.
Several of the last-second filings were a lil spicy:
SB 351 — Sen. Gex Williams (who one social media commenter noted has the most non-binary name they’d ever heard of) would like to ban trans teachers from the classroom (here’s my TGP about it, and here’s my Queer Ky. article about that is free to republish!)
HB 867 — Rep. Bill Wesley promised a year ago to keep trans women out of state Capitol bathrooms and here he is. (My Queer Ky. article that is, again, free to republish.)
HB 888 — Rep. Josh Bray says no more new unions for local governments and school districts.
HB 8 — What was that I was saying a bit ago about how I’ve learned so much about pettiness and persistence from the Kentucky GOP? Yeah, so, HB 8 is a new attempt to amend the state constitution to let the legislature call itself into session.
If that sounds familiar, it is because they tried something similar in 2022 and failed.
HB 8 is backed by the entire House GOP leadership.
Don’t remember 2022’s Amendment 1? It was the one that was the length of a CVS receipt on your ballot. To ensure future ballot measures are shorter, Senate President Robert Stivers is pushing SB 262 to allow just a short summary of a proposed amendment to be on ballots instead of the entire thing. (This would also require a constitutional amendment.)
And now for some not-so-phenomenal news: It looks like at least 104 of the bills are “shell bills.” (Trust me, I counted.)
mmk, what is a shell bill?
A shell bill is basically a bill that gets filed before the filing deadline with meaningless stuff so it can be filled with actual legislation after the deadline. A loophole.
And, yes, I know, literally any bill can become a shell bill if a lawmaker puts their mind to it. Lawmakers can swap out a bill’s language via committee subs — new versions of the bill they often present ahead of the committee vote, but without putting it online or in reporters’ hands and without explaining all of the new changes — literally whenever.
And as we’ve seen before, lawmakers can call a special committee meeting in the middle of lunch with six minutes of notice, present an overhauled bill, and get it passed out of there before some folks know what’s going on.
And floor amendments — while not typically as problematic — are also a thing.
But shell bills are bills flagged for being obviously for the purpose of getting stuffed.
How to spot a shell bill
Don’t worry, I’ve already gone through this year’s bills and flagged all of the ones that are clearly shell bills. (And when I was doing this, I quickly remembered why I haven’t leaned more into this in the past.)
Typically, a shell bill either is solely there to make “technical corrections” to a bill or to “insert gender-neutral language.”
It does nothing else. (There are some bills that make technical corrections, but they do other stuff, and those bills aren’t included in this list.)
(And there are some other bills we know will definitely change — like the budget bills — but those aren’t included because we at least know what they’re going after.)
To spare everyone else the headache, here’s every shell bill this session:
House Bill 353
House Bill 507
House Bill 509
House Bill 515
House Bill 523
House Bill 524
House Bill 546
House Bill 547
House Bill 603
House Bill 604
House Bill 605
House Bill 614
House Bill 640
House Bill 666
House Bill 673
House Bill 674
House Bill 675
House Bill 702
House Bill 703
House Bill 705
House Bill 706
House Bill 712
House Bill 719
House Bill 720
House Bill 721
House Bill 722
House Bill 724
House Bill 733
House Bill 734
House Bill 735
House Bill 743
House Bill 744
House Bill 745
House Bill 748
House Bill 787
House Bill 788
House Bill 793
House Bill 795
House Bill 796
House Bill 797
House Bill 798
House Bill 802
House Bill 804
House Bill 806
House Bill 807
House Bill 809
House Bill 810
House Bill 811
House Bill 812
House Bill 818
House Bill 819
House Bill 820
House Bill 825
House Bill 837
House Bill 838
House Bill 839
House Bill 840
House Bill 841
House Bill 852
House Bill 853
House Bill 854
House Bill 866
House Bill 872
House Bill 881
House Bill 907
House Bill 909
House Bill 925
Senate Bill 148
Senate Bill 187
Senate Bill 216
Senate Bill 232
Senate Bill 234
Senate Bill 235
Senate Bill 236
Senate Bill 244
Senate Bill 248
Senate Bill 269
Senate Bill 270
Senate Bill 271
Senate Bill 272
Senate Bill 274
Senate Bill 275
Senate Bill 283
Senate Bill 287
Senate Bill 293
Senate Bill 295
Senate Bill 297
Senate Bill 298
Senate Bill 301
Senate Bill 302
Senate Bill 305
Senate Bill 306
Senate Bill 308
Senate Bill 313
Senate Bill 314
Senate Bill 316
Senate Bill 328
Senate Bill 338
Senate Bill 341
Senate Bill 342
Senate Bill 346
Senate Bill 349
Senate Bill 353
Senate Bill 355
Yeah, there is no good way to split things into columns on Substack, as I just learned moments ago. I tried my best.
I’ve done enough damage this evening; I shall depart from this space now.
Don’t forget to drop potential mailbag questions and topics in this survey!
Thank you for keeping track of all of this so I don’t have to.