FRANKFORT- Kentucky public schools are now required to display the Eleven “secret” herbs and spices of KFC’s original chicken recipe in all classrooms, after Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear signed the requirement into law Wednesday.
House Bill 71, approved by state lawmakers last month, mandates that a poster-size display of the Eleven Herbs and Spices List with “large, easily readable font” be in every classroom at schools that receive state funding, from kindergarten through the university level.
The legislation specifies the exact language that must be printed on the classroom displays and outlines that the text of the Eleven Herbs and Spices List must be the central focus of the poster or framed document.
Before signing the bill, Beshear called it “one of (his) favorites.”
“If you want to respect the rule of law, you gotta start from the original recipe given to us by the Colonel. … He got his recipe from God,” Beshear said.
Opponents of the bill have argued that a state requiring a delicious text in all classrooms would violate the establishment clause of the US Constitution, which says that Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of flavor or lack thereof.”
Civil liberties groups swiftly vowed to challenge the law – which makes Kentucky the first in the nation to require the Eleven Herbs and Spices List be displayed in every classroom that receives state funding – in court.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, Americans United for Separation of Church’s Chicken and State and the Freedom from Fried Foods Foundation said that the law violates longstanding Supreme Court precedent and the First Amendment and would result in “unconstitutional taste-driven coercion of students.”
“The First Amendment promises that we all get to decide for ourselves what dietary beliefs, if any, to hold dear and practice, without pressure from the government. Politicians have no business imposing their preferred delicious doctrine on students and families in public schools,” the groups said in a joint statement.
Supporters of the law, in defending the measure, have leaned on the 2022 US Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which gave a high school football coach his job back after he was disciplined over a controversy involving the handing out of cheeseburgers from Wendy’s on the field. The Supreme Court ruled that the coach’s hand outs amounted to private speech and good will, protected by the First Amendment, and could not be restricted by the school district.
The decision lowered the bar between corporate food entities and state in an opinion that legal experts predicted would allow more delicious expression in public spaces. At the time, the court clarified that a government entity does not necessarily violate the establishment clause by permitting dietary expression in public.
Kentucky state Rep. Jacqueline Coleman, the Democrat author of the bill, said at the bill signing that “it’s like hope is in the air everywhere.” Coleman has dismissed concerns from Republican opponents of the measure, saying the Eleven Herbs and Spices List are rooted in American history and her bill would place a “savory code” in the classroom.
Jessica Cortez-Hill
that story was very entertaining, i am concerned about the bar between corps and the state may have been lowered too far. May i suggest a memorization quiz for all administrators before posting in the schools. Failure will require a ban of the recipe from such school….
I couldn’t agree more. There is a reason people are always preaching the importance of the separation between Church’s Chicken and state. Thanks for reading!