Kentucky's Public Adjuster Negotiation Ban Runs to July 15, 2028, and Starts at the Contract Date

Judge Jessica Green upheld Kentucky's ban on public adjusters negotiating insurance claims on October 28, then wrote the limit on it into her own order. Footnote 4 says any action against a public adjuster for negotiating "in connection with pre-HB 568 contracts would likely be unsuccessful," because KRS 446.080(3) refuses to run a statute backwards unless the statute says so, and Section 5 never says so.¹

The Legislative Research Commission had already reached the same place in flatter language. Its codification note on KRS 304.9-4331, dated July 15, 2026, records that Section 14 of the Act makes the amendments to that statute apply "to contracts entered into on or after July 15, 2026."² Section 5 of the Act is that statute. So the ban has a start line measured in contract dates, and a finish line the statute prints in its own heading.

What the order dismissed, and the authority behind each count

Brandi Dawn Carroll and her co-plaintiffs pleaded six counts against two bills and lost all of them on a CR 12.02(f) motion, which means the court decided the case on the pleadings and never reached a fact. The standard of review did much of the work. A Kentucky statute falls only where the constitutional violation is "clear, complete and unequivocal," and the party attacking the law carries that burden.¹

The HB 355 count went first, and it went on standing. HB 355 regulates real-property appraisers, the plaintiffs are licensed public adjusters, and under Nichols a person whose rights are not injured by a law cannot challenge it.¹ The order therefore decides nothing about HB 355 itself. A dismissal for want of standing reaches only the parties in front of the court, so whatever that bill does to real-property appraisers is still untested, and it will stay untested until a licensed appraiser brings it.

The equal-protection count is where the court chose its ground, and the sentence it chose matters more than the result. The plaintiffs argued that staff and independent adjusters, whom HB 568 leaves alone, do work identical to theirs. The court said the two are "quite dissimilar in one critical respect: the former do not charge insureds for negotiating claims, whereas the latter do."¹ HB 568 passed the House 95-1 on third reading and the Senate 36-0 with a committee substitute. The House refused to concur, and the bill then cleared both chambers on a free conference committee report, 33-1 in the Senate and 91-0 in the House.⁷ Every state drafting a copy of it now has that sentence to quote. The profession's answer, that carrier adjusters are paid for the same work out of loss-adjustment expense rather than by invoice, appears nowhere in the eight pages.

The dates the statute prints in its own headings

Both temporary restrictions in HB 568 are dated, and they do not start on the same day. The Act carries an emergency clause, but Section 15 spends it narrowly: Sections 1, 2, 3, 10, 11 and 12 take effect on the Governor's signature, which landed April 13, 2026.³ The rest waited out the ordinary ninety-day clock.

So the license freeze began on signature day. KRS 304.9-430 now carries it in the statute's own heading, "Limitation for two years beginning on April 13, 2026," and the operative text bars the commissioner from accepting or approving any public adjuster application and bars the Department from issuing any license until that term runs out.⁴ Two doors stay open inside the freeze. A license in effect on April 13, 2026 renews normally and continues in force until it expires or is revoked, and anyone holding a temporary or apprentice adjuster license on that same date may still apply for and be issued a full public adjuster license while the freeze is running.⁴ That second door is the only route into the profession in Kentucky before April 2028, and it closed to new entrants the day it opened.

The negotiating ban took the slower route. KRS 304.9-4331(7) reads, in full: "For a period of two (2) years beginning on July 15, 2026, a public adjuster shall not negotiate with an insurer on behalf of an insured in the adjustment or settlement of a claim."² Ninety-three days separate the start dates, and 2028 inherits the gap.

Section 14 reads "Sections 4 to 7," and the briefing read it as four and seven

The Contracts Clause count turned on a premise the plaintiffs supplied themselves. Section 19 of the Kentucky Constitution bars a law impairing the obligation of contracts, and by the court's reading it bites only where a law is applied to agreements formed before it passed. So the plaintiffs needed the ban to reach backwards, and the order records them emphasizing that the applicability provision covers "Sections 4 and 7" and that this language "necessarily excludes Section 5."¹

Open the enrolled Act and the provision is a range. Section 14 reads: "Sections 4 to 7 of this Act apply to contracts entered into on or after the effective date of Sections 4 to 7 of this Act."³ Section 5 sits between four and seven, and Section 5 is the negotiating ban. The Legislative Research Commission codified it on exactly that reading, attaching the July 15, 2026 contract line as a note to KRS 304.9-4331 itself and to KRS 304.9-4333 alongside it.²

Judge Green dismissed the count on Maze and the police power, then added footnote 4 in the alternative: no explicit decree makes Section 5 retroactive, so discipline over a pre-HB 568 contract "would likely be unsuccessful."¹ What a Kentucky adjuster has, then, is a codifier's note and an alternative aside, dictum rather than a holding, in an order that rejected the argument underneath both. Preserve the point, date-stamp the book, and take the question to counsel before acting on it, because the office that just won this motion is the office that enforces the ban.

Negotiating now answers to the Attorney General

Section 9 of HB 568 created a new section of KRS Chapter 367, the Consumer Protection Act. A violation of Sections 4 through 7 "shall be deemed to be an unfair, false, misleading, or deceptive act or practice in the conduct of trade or commerce in violation of KRS 367.170," and every remedy, power and duty the Attorney General holds under KRS 367.110 to 367.300, together with the penalties in KRS 367.990, applies with equal force and effect.³ The remedies are cumulative, and the section declines to limit anything otherwise available to the Attorney General, the Commonwealth, or any other person.³

Russell Coleman defended HB 568 in his official capacity as Attorney General and won dismissal with prejudice to refiling.¹ His office holds the hook the Act wrote.

What the court left a Kentucky adjuster is a list, and it is the Attorney General's own list, quoted back from the motion to dismiss. A public adjuster may "continue to inspect property, document losses, prepare estimates, organize claim documentation, [and] advise insureds," and may prepare the insured "for discussions with adjusters employed by insurance companies."¹ The court paired that with a reminder that company adjusters are themselves regulated and answerable under KRS 304.12-230, which enumerates seventeen unfair claims settlement practices, among them the failure to attempt in good faith to effectuate prompt, fair and equitable settlements of claims in which liability has become reasonably clear.⁶ The insured gets to make that argument. On a post-July-15 file, the insured makes it in person.

The file still has to be built, and the building is unchanged. The scope, the photographs, the moisture readings, the component-level estimate and the written coverage position all remain the adjuster's work product. Kentucky is the second state this year to move the line between preparing a claim and presenting one by statute, after Virginia made an unlicensed roofer's claim work into the licensed adjuster's problem.

What the approved contract form has to say now

Section 4 rewrote KRS 304.9-433, and it lands on the same contract-date line as the ban. The seventy-two-hour notification letter is the clearest tell. It used to authorize the public adjuster to "represent the insured's interest." The amended text strikes that phrase and substitutes a letter authorizing the adjuster to "render advice and assistance to the insured in accordance with this subtitle."³ A letter still carrying the old sentence describes work the statute no longer permits. The contract behind it is the separately regulated document: it has to be executed on a form prefiled with and approved by the commissioner before any services are provided, so a Kentucky book running on pre-July-15 paper needs both the form refiled and the letter rewritten.³

The fee provisions moved on the same date, and the cap is not limited to contingency work. KRS 304.9-4333(1) binds "[a]ny fee charged to an insured by a public adjuster," and subsection (2)(b)2 allows a reasonable fee "that does not exceed ten percent (10%) of the insurance settlement proceeds upon which a fee may be based under this section."⁵ Hourly, flat rate, percentage or another method, the ceiling is the same ten percent. It replaces a split that allowed fifteen percent on noncatastrophic claims and ten on catastrophic ones.³ Pennsylvania went the other direction this autumn, landing on twenty percent after two amendments. Kentucky also kept the rule that the fee is collected only after the insured has the settlement money in hand.⁵ And KRS 304.9-4331(6)(d) now bars a public adjuster from using "a contractor, another form of business, or any other person to solicit or obtain contract signatures,"² which puts the referral channel on the footing Illinois reached when a roofer's lead voided the contract outright.

The order says it is final and appealable, and it dismissed the amended complaint with prejudice to refiling.¹ Whether a notice of appeal has reached the Kentucky Court of Appeals could not be confirmed for this piece: the Commonwealth's appellate portal sits behind a login, and no notice appeared in any public source as of November 2, 2026. What the record does not support is a prediction either way. The dates do not depend on the appeal, though. Absent new legislation, the license freeze lapses April 13, 2028, the negotiating ban lapses July 15, 2028, and the line Section 14 drew runs through the date on the contract rather than the date on the loss.