Kentucky Judges Reject City’s Challenge to Restaurant Tax Ban

A law allowing only a certain class of Kentucky cities to enact restaurant taxes isn’t unconstitutionally arbitrary, a state appeals court ruled Friday, reversing a ruling in favor of the city of Hazard.

“Kentucky may have the strongest separation of powers in our federal union,” explicitly barring incursion of one branch into the powers of another, Judge Kelly Mark Easton wrote for the Kentucky Court of Appeals. Therefore it was improper for the trial court to fix the legislature’s earlier mistake of placing Hazard in the category of cities that can’t impose the tax, the appeals court said.

Kentucky law ...