Commonwealth v. Howard

In Commonwealth v. Howard, Ky., 969 S.W.2d 700, 703 (1998), the Supreme Court ruled that the "juvenile" DUI statute (KRS 189A.010(1)(e)) did not violate the equal protection clause. The Court explained that under the rational basis test a classification must be upheld against an equal protection challenge if there is any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification . . . . Legislative classification is not subject to a court-room fact-finding process and "may be based on rational speculation unsupported by evidence or empirical data ." Merely because the statute may result in some practical inequity does not cause it to fail the rational basis test for review. So long as the statute's generalization is rationally related to the achievement of a legitimate purpose; the statute is constitutional. Id. at 703.