Request By:
Hon. Bremer Ehrler
Jefferson County Clerk
Jefferson County Court House
Louisville, Kentucky 40202
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Nancy M. Collins, Assistant Attorney General
This is in response to your question of whether a Doctor of Chiropractic is considered a "Licensed Physician" for the purpose of certifying the disability of an applicant for a handicapped parking permit. Our response is in the negative.
KRS 189.456(3) requires proof of a handicap by, among other means, "a statement from a licensed physician that the applicant is a person whose mobility, flexibility, coordination, respiration or perceptiveness is significantly reduced by a permanent or temporary disability to that person's arms, legs, lungs or eyes." A "physician" is defined in KRS 311.550(10) as "a doctor of medicine or a doctor of osteopathy. " Therefore, only a doctor of medicine or doctor of osteopathy duly licensed pursuant to KRS Chapter 311 is competent to certify the existence of a handicap pursuant to KRS 189.456(3)(c).
Additional support for this result is found in KRS 312.015(4) which expressly excludes the practice of medicine or osteopathy from the practice of chiropractic.