Midnight Merely a State of Mind in Kentucky

It was six minutes until midnight, April 15 -- for over an hour – on the floor of the Kentucky state legislature, as lawmakers pulled a clock-stopping maneuver around the state’s constitution.

Kentucky’s constitution commands that the state’s legislature cannot remain in session, thus cannot act on bills, beyond midnight on April 15. So when faced with that deadline, reports the Lexington Herald-Leader, lawmakers turned off the clocks on the walls of both the House and Senate at 11:54 p.m., and kept right on passing laws for another hour.

TV cameras and reports witnessed at least five bills passed after the midnight deadline. Needless to say, the legals status of those measures has been called into question.

“If they have evidence that clearly shows that these bills were enrolled on April 16, they (those bills) may be held to be enacted in violation of the constitution and therefore invalid,” stated former Kentucky Supreme Court Justice James Keller in the Lexington Herald-Leader story.

The U.S. Constitution places no such strict time limits on the legislative process in the United States Congress.