Kentucky lawmakers have scaled back a bill that would alter how courts handle legal challenges to state government.

House Bill 3 would have set up randomly selected panels of three judges.

That panel would hear cases involving state government or the Kentucky constitution.

Instead, the revised version requires those legal challenges must be filed in the home county of the plaintiff not the defendant. If the plaintiff is not a resident of Kentucky then the case would be filed in Franklin Circuit Court.

The revised bill has been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The changes come after Kentucky Supreme Court Justice John Minton expressed he was strongly against the original version of the bill last week. He nicknamed the bill the “Rube Goldberg bill” and said it “needs to die.”

“The reason I really wanted to crawl out of bed and come here today is to tell you that this is an egregious, an egregious invasion of separation of powers,” Minton said last Friday. “This Rube Goldberg bill is an unconstitutional invasion.”

Minton did not comment on the new version of the bill Tuesday.  Sen. Whitney Westerfield, R-Crofton says this is because Minton believes the new bill respects the separation of powers.