Supreme Court Lets National Horse Racing Safety Rules Remain in Effect

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on Oct. 23, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 28 allowed safety rules for horse racing to remain in effect as litigation challenging the rules proceeds.

Justices ruled 8–1 to keep the rules in place, backing a stay entered by Justice Samuel Alito in September.

Alito, and now the full court, stayed a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals from the Fifth Circuit that found unconstitutional part of a law that gives a nonprofit, the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA), power to impose and enforce horse racing safety rules. If not stayed, the ruling would have prevented the authority from investigating possible rulebreakers and issuing fines.

The majority did not explain its decision.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. She said the application for a stay from the nonprofit “fails to demonstrate any exigency that would warrant such emergency relief.”

She said: “I see no reason for us to intervene in an emergency posture. I would therefore deny the application and promptly proceed to consider the pending petition for certiorari.”

HISA is overseen by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It had told the court that it should be permitted to keep all the rules in place as the case plays out, portraying the Fifth Circuit’s ruling as an outlier.

The appeals court ruling was “wrong in two key respects: (i) it disregards this Court’s caution against wiping out broad swaths of federal legislation on a facial basis; and (ii) it overlooks the many ways Congress purposefully subordinated the Authority’s enforcement of HISA rules to the FTC’s approval, control, and independent power,” HISA stated in a motion for emergency relief.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other Texas officials told the court that the Fifth Circuit “did not err by upholding the bedrock separation-of-powers rule that the President alone can execute the law” and that justices should decline to stay the circuit’s ruling.

Congress in 2020 established HISA as a national regulatory body. The national rules replaced a state-by-state system. HISA is governed by a board of directors, none of whom are appointed by the president. The president also cannot remove them.

Courts found the law unconstitutional, prompting Congress to give the FTC more power. The Fifth Circuit then said the change fixed some of the issues, but the part of the law that lets the nonprofit investigate possible violations and levy fines, without oversight from the commission, was forbidden by the Constitution.