U.S. District Court Judge Danny Reeves ruled Tuesday that the state Judicial Conduct Commission and Kentucky Bar Association cannot punish a candidate for making statements that appear to commit that candidate to a certain stance or issue.

"Kentucky's canon of judicial conduct that professes to prohibit candidates from making promises, pledges or commitments, in fact limits the candidate's ability to announce his or her views in violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution," Reeves wrote.

Reeves' ruling does not take effect until Thursday, and lawyers for the Bar Association and the Judicial Conduct Commission said they would most likely appeal.

"I think the Supreme Court will carefully review what the judge decided and take the appropriate action," said Jim Lawson, director of the Judicial Conduct Commission. The commission enforces the rules of the state Supreme Court regarding conduct of judges.

Lewis Paisley, a former Fayette Circuit Court judge now on senior status, said the ruling could be a problem for judges who decide to make statements.

"If I'm a judge that says I believe in tort reform and then a case comes before me that deals with that issue, the lawyers on the other side are going to ask me to recuse. So I can go out and make statements about how I'm going to rule on a case, but because of those statements I'm never actually going to rule on any of those cases," Paisley said.

The Family Trust Foundation, a conservative Lexington non-profit organization, sent surveys to judicial candidates this summer that asked candidates questions about such issues as gay marriage and the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings.

The majority of judicial candidates returned the survey, saying they could not answer the questions because of a state judicial canon that prohibits what are called commitment statements or statements that "commit or appear to commit a candidate with respect to cases, controversies or issues that are likely to come before the court."

Family Trust filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in September, saying that state ethics laws violated a judge's right to free speech and violated voters' rights to know how judges stand on certain issues.

Similar lawsuits were filed in North Dakota, Alaska and Indiana.

Lawyers for the Bar Association and the Judicial Commission argued that Family Trust did not have standing to bring the lawsuit. They also argued that the commission or the bar had not punished a candidate for trying to fill out the survey.