Ky. Supreme Court Reverses City's Ban on No-Knock Warrants

Kentucky’s highest court has reversed Lexington’s ban on no-knock warrants, ruling that a city ordinance banning their use directly conflicts with state law.

The Kentucky Supreme Court issued the ruling Thursday morning, reversing a decision from the lower Court of Appeals that said the city’s 2021 ban on no-knock warrants was lawful.

Writing for the majority of the court, Justice Robert Conley wrote that a state statute designed to limit how no-knock warrants can be executed explicitly allows those warrants to be executed throughout the state.

“Nothing has been shown to negate this one salient fact: LPD officers are directly prohibited, and the judges of Lexington- Fayette County are indirectly limited by the ordinance from doing what the judges and law enforcement officers in the rest of the Commonwealth are authorized to do per the statute. The ordinance prohibits what the statute allows, it makes illegal what the statute declares is legal, and therefore contravenes the public policy of the Commonwealth,” Conley wrote.

Two of the court’s seven justices, Michelle Keller and Angela Bisig dissented in the ruling. Justices Debra Lambert, Shea Nickell and Kelly Thompson concurred with Conley’s opinion. Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Pamela Goodwine did not opine on the case.

The Supreme Court’s ruling argues that the city’s ordinance conflicts directly with Kentucky’s Senate Bill 4, enacted in 2021 to regulate no-knock warrants statewide, setting strict standards for when and how they can be issued and executed.

Susan Straub, spokesperson for the city, said the office just received the ruling and needed time to study it before offering comment.

The debate began when Lexington passed an ordinance in 2021 banning city police from using no-knock warrants — a type of warrant where officers can enter a home without first knocking on the front door or announcing themselves.

State law requires such warrants to be signed by a judge, and they can be used only for potentially violent offenders and suspects of specific types of serious crimes.

The law also outlines a time restriction for when no-knock warrants can be executed.

“The time restriction allows them for hours in the day when people are generally awake — a significant issue when there have been several notable incidents around the country in which no-knock warrants executed in the middle of the night led the resident, jolted from sleep, to grab a gun and defend himself from what he may have believed was an unlawful intrusion by private individuals, only to be killed by law enforcement officers,” the opinion read.

In her dissent, Justice Michelle Keller said the court majority is misunderstanding Senate Bill 4.

“The mere fact that the state has made certain regulations does not prohibit local government from establishing additional requirements as long as there is no conflict between them,” Keller wrote.

She argued that such an interpretation of state statute would hamstring localities from providing any kind of further regulation on subjects of state statute, acting as an unnecessary “ceiling” on local policymaking.

“The majority endorses an overly simplistic interpretation of preemption wherein state legislation operates as a ceiling rather than a floor, thereby effectively stripping local governments across the Commonwealth of their constitutionally vested authority,” Keller wrote.

The lawsuit and Court of Appeals ruling

Lexington’s local police union, which advocates on behalf of police officers, claimed the change was unlawful and ran afoul of the union’s collective bargaining agreement because the union was not consulted about the change.

But the Supreme Court punted that argument, instead basing its decision on the local ordinance conflicting with state law.

“Several legal questions regarding collective bargaining were also presented by this appeal,” Conley wrote. “Our ruling renders these questions moot, and we decline to address them.”

But Keller and Bisig did address the collective bargaining argument.

Keller wrote that Lexington had a duty to bargain with the Fraternal Order of Police and violated the union’s collective bargaining agreement by refusing to participate in the grievance procedure after the ordinance was passed. She wrote that the union issue should go back to trial court.

Bisig, in her dissent, wrote that the ordinance was a public policy issue and that bargaining was not required.

Lexington’s ban came a year after public outcry nationwide following the fatal Louisville police shooting of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman and emergency room technician, whose apartment was raided with a signed, no-knock warrant.

The Louisville Metro Police Department said officers announced their presence before forcing entry with a battering ram. The warrant aimed to seize evidence related to a suspected drug trafficking ring in Louisville involving Taylor’s ex-boyfriend. After police broke down Taylor’s front door, her boyfriend fired one shot from inside the apartment because he said he believed the officers were intruders, striking a police sergeant.

Three officers returned fire, killing Taylor. The Lexington lawsuit, filed by the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #4, which represents Lexington officers, has made its way through Kentucky courts over the past four years.

Louisville passed a ban on no-knock warrants before Senate Bill 4 was passed by the state’s legislature. It is unclear if the Supreme Court’s ruling would overturn its ordinance.

_______________

©2025 Lexington Herald-Leader.

Visit kentucky.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.