Kentucky's Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday that a 2022 law establishing public funding for charter schools violates the state constitution, delivering a blow to school choice advocates who have spent nearly a decade trying to get charter schools off the ground in the Commonwealth.
Justice Michelle M. Keller, writing for the court, left no ambiguity about the decision's foundation:
"Constitution as it stands is clear that it does not permit funneling public education funds outside the common public school system."
The ruling affirms a lower court decision that struck down the measure the year after it was enacted. Charter schools have technically been legal in Kentucky since 2017. Not a single one has opened. The reason is simple: there has never been a mechanism to fund them. The legislature tried to change that in 2022, passing a funding measure over Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear's veto. Now the state's highest court has sealed the door shut.
The court's reasoning rests on Kentucky's constitutional language around public education, which the justices interpreted as reserving state education dollars exclusively for "common schools," the state's term for its traditional public school system, the Associated Press reported.
"The mandate implicates state education funds are for common schools and for nothing else."
That phrase, "and for nothing else," is doing enormous work. It doesn't merely reject this particular funding mechanism. It erects a constitutional barrier against any future legislative attempt to direct state education money toward charter schools, at least without amending the constitution itself.
Kentucky voters were given exactly that opportunity in 2024, when a ballot measure asked whether state lawmakers should be allowed to allocate public tax dollars to support students attending private or charter schools. Voters rejected it.
So the legislature tried the statutory route. The courts said no. The voters were asked directly. They also said no. That's a difficult political landscape for school choice in Kentucky, no matter how you frame it.
The frustrating reality for conservatives who support educational freedom is that Kentucky has spent nine years with charter schools technically on the books and nothing to show for it. Legal since 2017, funded by no one, and now constitutionally locked out of state dollars. It's a school choice policy that exists only on paper.
Keller's opinion was careful to avoid making a policy judgment on charter schools themselves:
"We make no predictions about the potential success of charter schools or their ability to improve the education of the Commonwealth's children, and we leave public policy evaluations to the Commonwealth's designated policymakers — the General Assembly."
That line reads like a judicial shrug. The court acknowledged that the policy question belongs to the legislature, then told the legislature that its answer is constitutionally impermissible. The General Assembly can evaluate charter schools all it wants. It just can't fund them.
School choice has gained serious momentum in red and purple states across the country in recent years, with universal or near-universal education savings accounts passing in states like Arizona, Florida, and West Virginia. Kentucky now stands as a cautionary tale about what happens when a state constitution's education clause is written tightly enough to block legislative innovation.
The path forward for charter school advocates in Kentucky is narrow and steep:
That last point matters more than it might seem. In states where school choice programs exist, parents become the most effective advocates for their continuation and expansion. Kentucky never got that far. There are no families whose children benefited from a charter school, no success stories to point to, no grassroots pressure from parents who experienced the alternative and refuse to go back. The program was strangled before it could breathe.
Opponents of charter schools argue that they divert needed funds from traditional public schools. It's the same argument deployed everywhere school choice gains traction, and it carries the same underlying assumption: that the money belongs to the system, not the student.
Conservatives reject that premise. Education funding exists to educate children, not to sustain institutions. When a public school fails a child, telling that family the constitution requires their tax dollars to stay in the failing school is not a principle worth defending. It's a protection racket for mediocrity.
But in Kentucky, that argument is now a constitutional reality. The state's founding document, as interpreted unanimously by its highest court, says the money belongs to the common school system. Period.
For families in underperforming districts across the Commonwealth, the court's message is clear: the system is the priority. You are not.
