Kentucky Fairness Campaign Director arrested for Protesting KFB Discrimination policies

Fairness Campaign Director Chris Hartman and fairness advocates Sonja De Vries and Carla Wallace were dragged out of the Kentucky State Fair’s ham breakfast for the Kentucky Farm Bureau Thursday morning.

The three were arrested after protesting KFB’s discriminatory policies against LGBTQ+ people.

Each year, Kentucky Farm Bureau Insurance customers are automatically charged a fee that enrolls them as compulsory members of the company’s 501(c)4 lobbying arm, which spent nearly $100,000 last year lobbying the Kentucky General Assembly on policies outlined in their printed policy book, which elected officials receive but policyholders do not.

The policy book includes positions that are anti-LGBTQ, anti-teacher, anti-union, anti-choice, anti-POC, pro-death penalty, and more, They recently added a policy targeting transgender students in Kentucky schools. Anyone can download a full copy of the 2019 Kentucky Farm Bureau Policies book at Fairness.org/KFB.

In 2015, three protesters were arrested for standing in silent protest of the policies at the Kentucky Farm Bureau Ham Breakfast. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled 2-1 against activists’ First Amendment and False Arrest claims against the Kentucky State Police in Hartman et al. v Thompson et al.