AN ACT relating to the protection of children.
SB 138, titled “Jayden’s Law,” is a broad child-protection bill that makes major changes to Kentucky criminal law, child-care licensing rules, and parental-rights termination standards. It creates a new capital offense for “child abuse homicide” when a person intentionally abuses or neglects a child under 18 and the child dies as a result. The bill also expands several existing child-abuse and homicide offenses by raising the protected age from under 12 to under 18, increasing penalties for criminal abuse, and adding fentanyl-related homicide provisions to manslaughter statutes.
The bill also substantially revises child-care regulation. It requires unannounced inspections, public disclosure of inspection and deficiency information, mandatory staff training on child safety and abusive head trauma, a ban on corporal punishment in licensed child-care settings, and video surveillance in public areas of child-care centers with notice to parents and 90-day retention of footage. It further narrows or clarifies exemptions for certain preschool and school-age instructional programs, while preserving background-check and tuberculosis-screening requirements for some exempt programs.
SB 138 would amend multiple chapters of Kentucky law, including criminal code provisions in KRS Chapters 507 and 508, child-care licensing provisions in KRS 199.896, capital sentencing procedures in KRS 532.025, and termination-of-parental-rights standards in KRS 625.090. It would increase criminal exposure for child abuse and neglect involving minors under 18, create a new capital offense, and make child abuse resulting in death a more severe sentencing factor. On the regulatory side, it would impose additional compliance, reporting, surveillance, and training obligations on licensed child-care centers and related programs, while also changing how the Cabinet for Health and Family Services inspects, cites, and penalizes providers.
No committee transcripts or recorded votes were provided, so there is no direct evidence of debate or formal support/opposition in the available record. Based on the bill text alone, the measure appears strongly child-safety oriented and framed as a protection bill, suggesting an intent to appeal to concerns about abuse prevention, accountability, and transparency in child care. The overall tone of the legislation is punitive toward severe child abuse and regulatory toward child-care providers.
The most likely points of contention are the bill’s expansion of criminal penalties, especially the creation of a capital offense for child abuse homicide and the broader use of death-penalty aggravators involving children. Child-care providers may also object to the surveillance mandate, unannounced inspections, public disclosure of deficiency information, and the administrative burden of new training and compliance requirements. Another possible area of dispute is the narrowing of licensure exemptions for certain preschool and school-age programs, which could affect recreational, educational, and faith-based or specialty programs that operate outside traditional child-care models.