Background:
In March 2026, the Kentucky House of Representatives voted 73-14 to approve articles of impeachment against a Fayette County judge. The articles were sent to the Senate for further review. Since then, the matter has .
The Kentucky Supreme Court has attempted to halt the impeachment process. Impeachment and removal are purely legislative functions. The judiciary has no role in matters of impeachment.
Learn more about impeachment in Kentucky.
The Senate passed a resolution calling on the Judicial Conduct Commission to hold public proceedings reviewing the allegations against Goodman, while explicitly stating that the pause "does not constitute a decision or judgment" on the articles and does not relinquish the Senate's right to act on them in the future. In other words, the articles remain pending before the Senate — they have neither been voted on nor formally dismissed.
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That posture sits uneasily with the plain text of the Kentucky Constitution. Section 66 assigns the House "the sole power of impeachment," and Section 67 states simply that "all impeachments shall be tried by the Senate" — language that has traditionally been read as mandatory, not discretionary, once the House has done its part. Section 109, which vests the state's judicial power, adds that "the impeachment powers of the General Assembly shall remain inviolate," a term Kentucky courts have defined to mean a power that cannot be annulled, obstructed, or restricted by either of the other branches.
Read together, these provisions describe a self-contained constitutional process: the House impeaches, and the Senate tries the case — full stop. Whatever the merits of the Supreme Court's separation-of-powers concerns about the underlying petition, the constitutional text does not appear to give the judiciary a role in that sequence, which is why the Senate's continued delay — rather than either a trial or a formal dismissal — remains constitutionally unresolved territory.
Learn more about impeachment in Kentucky.