City to Repeal Profanity Law from 1967

The Paducah City Commission introduced an ordinance at its meeting Tuesday night that would repeal a "profane language" ordinance that's over 50 years old. 

City Clerk Lindsay Parish told commissioners that section 66-93 of the code of ordinances was adopted in 1967, but the Kentucky Supreme Court issued an opinion in February 2017 that says government has no power to, "restrict expression because of its message, ideas, subject matter or content." This led to a staff examination of ordinances to see if any of them were content-based, and they showed this law to the city attorney.

"Our attorney agreed that this is content-based, that it's not enforceable as such, and that the best action would be to just repeal it in its entirety," Parrish said. 

The Commission will vote on the new ordinance on December 11.