Louisville, KY — In Defense of Animals (IDA), Animal Protection Institute (API), The Trixie Foundation, and seventeen other co-plaintiffs have joined forces to file a class action lawsuit demanding that Kentucky comply with state law that mandates every county within the Commonwealth to employ a dog warden and to establish and maintain a dog pound.

Amazingly, scores of counties in Kentucky do not have a dog pound, and of the counties that do, many are nothing more than shabby, run-down death camps in which dogs languish in squalor while waiting to die often being euthanized by gunshot. The class action lawsuit seeks to end these barbaric and unlawful conditions by forcing Kentucky to establish and maintain dog pounds in every county and to establish minimum standards of care for the shelters.

"Individuals running private rescue organizations are being forced to take in and care for hundreds of animals because the Commonwealth of Kentucky is not complying with the laws mandated by the General Assembly," said Elliot Katz, DVM, president of IDA. "It's a tragedy, not only because thousands of dogs are being neglected and treated like disposable commodities, but also because these private organizations are taking on the State's financial burden of housing, feeding and caring for the animals."

The lawsuit stems from a 1990 incident in which Elliot County, KY failed and refused to comply with statutory requirements to provide a shelter for stray, injured, neglected, abused or unwanted dogs. The Trixie Foundation, a no-kill shelter and rescue organization that continually accepts dogs from Elliot County, sought to obtain proper enforcement of the law, but County officials and the Commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Agriculture have repeatedly failed and refused to comply. It is estimated that The Trixie Foundation will expend upwards of $850,000 of private money to care for the dogs over their lifetime.

"It is outlandish and ridiculous that just because I am a compassionate and concerned person dedicated to helping animals I am forced to take on the State's mandated responsibilities," said Randy Skaggs, Founder of The Trixie Foundation. "There are dogs literally dying in the streets and Kentucky's government is not lifting a finger to help them. The infrastructure is already here, we just need government officials to live up to the law, otherwise, thousands of dogs are going to continually die because there is not place for them to live."

Copies of the lawsuit are available by contacting IDA.