Kentucky Supreme Court Chief Justice Debra Lambert is asking the state’s legislature to greenlight more funding to improve judicial employees’ pay and court facilities across the state.
Lambert, who became the state’s first female chief justice earlier this year, spoke to lawmakers on the Interim Joint Committee on Judiciary Thursday during her first State of the Judiciary address. The Kentucky General Assembly will return to Frankfort in January for the 2026 legislative session, which will include debate on the next two-year state budget.
Throughout her address, Lambert called for a “better approach” to how the judicial branch is funded to shore up its operations for the future. Among her funding requests for the state’s judicial branch, Lambert is asking for a 15% pay raise for all judicial branch employees, which would mean a general fund increase of $37 million. She added that Kentucky judicial branch employees make about 17% less on average than executive branch counterparts.
The chief justice said the judicial branch faces “serious challenges” when attracting and retaining qualified employees.
“Successful attorneys may have previously chosen to take a cut in pay to serve as a judge because of the potential for good retirement benefits, but that doesn’t happen anymore,” she said.
Kentucky general jurisdiction judges ranked 48th in pay in comparison to other states, according to the National Center for State Courts.
Lambert also emphasized a need to better maintain court facilities across the state. Following April floods, some Kentucky courthouses sustained heavy damage, including the Franklin County Courthouse in the state capital of Frankfort. The Franklin courts system moved operations back into the courthouse in September, but flood remediation was still ongoing. The judicial branch is asking for a one-time funding request to offset more than $8.5 million in flood related damages in Franklin and Hardin counties.
The chief justice also proposed that the judicial branch have a dedicated revenue source to support long-term technology needs, such as subscription software and courtroom audio and video systems.
“We must ensure that our courts remain strong, stable and accessible for generations to come,” Lambert said. “But great optimism does not mean that we can ignore a very harsh reality.”
The budget for Kentucky’s judicial branch is now about 3% of the state’s General Fund budget, or more than $466 million. In comparison, the executive branch is 97% of the General Fund budget, or $16.8 billion.
Additionally, Lambert requested that the judicial branch have early access to its reserve account to make up for a projected shortfall of roughly $14.3 million in the next fiscal year. The legislature must sign off on the request, even though the judiciary would access its own funds and would not require supplemental funds.
Lambert also gave updates about various court programs to support Kentuckians in the court system. In particular, the Kentucky Judicial Commission on Mental Health has repeatedly heard that “our system is strained, but it can be repaired and improved,” Lambert said.Challenges described include transportation. For example, current rules around regional mental health hospital assignments can mean that a person who is suicidal doesn’t get taken to the closest hospital, like a person suffering a medical emergency would. Lambert said there is a need for “greater consistency, improve coordination and quicker access to treatment.”
‘Do what we can do’
House Republican Whip Rep. Jason Nemes, of Middletown, said legislators will “do what we can do” to approve a pay raise for the judicial branch. He added that the General Assembly increased pay for general jurisdiction judges by 20% over four years to $156,000, but Kentucky has still fallen behind other states.
When responding to Nemes’ comments, Lambert added that she would like to expand resources for truancy prevention for students from the courts, such as a curriculum that judges can offer schools. About 25% of Kentucky students were chronically absent from school during the 2024-25 school year, according to data from the Kentucky Department of Education.
Nemes then said that chronic absenteeism is an issue in Jefferson County Public Schools, which is the state’s largest public school district centered around the Louisville metro area.
“I would note that Jefferson County Public Schools has 92,000 kids in it, and we have to do things differently for Jefferson County Public Schools. Because anybody who would say that we must treat JCPS the same as we treat Robertson County, which has 3,000 people in the entire county, I don’t think is understanding the real world,” Nemes said. “So, we have to regulate things that are different, and we hope that the court of justice understands that in cases that might be before it or might be coming before it.”
The Supreme Court agreed to rehear oral arguments in one of those cases this year, where JCPS challenged a 2022 law that shifts power from the elected school board to the appointed superintendent. Justices narrowly voted to vacate a previous ruling and renew the case after the election of Justice Pamela Goodwine last year.
Nemes published an op-ed in the Louisville Courier-Journal before the second round of oral arguments saying that the court’s next ruling “will not only determine the future of Jefferson County’s schools but could also unravel critical local policies that benefit urban, suburban and rural communities.”
Though they didn’t address the committee Wednesday, Goodwine and Deputy Chief Justice Robert Conley were in the audience behind Lambert during the meeting.
This article was originally published by the Kentucky Lantern.
