Eric Hamelback

The revamped Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) statute that got signed into law back in December was judged to be constitutional late on Thursday by the Texas federal district judge handling the case on remand from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. "Congress answered the call-identifying the three constitutional concerns that led the Fifth Circuit to hold HISA unconstitutional and rectifying each with the amendment," wrote United States District Court Judge James Wesley Hendrix in his May 4 order out of the Northern District of...

A federal judge in Texas has issued a 30-day waiting period before the rules of HISA's Anti-Doping Medication and Control (ADMC) can take effect. Those rules initially went into effect Monday, Mar. 27, but will now be suspended until May 1. During the month of April, therefore, HISA will turn back the job of collecting samples and testing back to the states, said HISA CEO Lisa Lazarus on a Friday night media call. The ruling, issued Friday, was the latest in a long back-and-forth bitter struggle between pro-HISA and anti-HISA...

A federal bill aimed at replacing the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) with a regulatory system modeled around an interstate compact is reportedly in the pipeline. The president of the United States Trotting Association (USTA), Russell Williams, disclosed the news about the pending legislation Mar. 21 during a special meeting of the Pennsylvania Horse Racing Commission (PHRC). Williams addressed the PHRC Tuesday just prior to the board voting in favor of entering into three nine-month agreements with the HISA Authority that pertain to the Racetrack Safety Program, the Horseracing...

Edited Press Release The 2023 National HBPA Annual Conference closed with a lively discussion with three prominent horsemen who questioned the need, validity and overreach of federal legislation pitched as the so-called savior of racing while the industry heads into a challenging economic and logistical future. Bret Calhoun, Ron Faucheux and Jason Barkley participated in the Trainer's Talk panel moderated by multiple Eclipse Award-winning journalist and media specialist Jennie Rees and talked about everything from the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, challenges facing small to mid-sized stables, finding and keeping...

Edited Press Release Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and Daniel Suhr, managing attorney for the Liberty Justice Center, told an assembly of racehorse owners, trainers and racing regulators Tuesday that they expect the Horseracing Integrity & Safety Act (HISA) to wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court-- and they also believe America's highest court will strike down the legislation as unconstitutional. While the room at the Hotel Monteleone was populated with folks concerned how HISA will impact their industry, Landry and Suhr said the four legal challenges before the Fifth...

by Sue Finley and T. D. Thornton This story has been updated. The Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals on Tuesday denied a motion by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) Authority for that court to vacate its recent opinion that HISA is unconstitutional. Back on Jan. 3, the HISA Authority had asked for the Fifth Circuit's Nov. 18, 2022, anti-constitutionality order to be vacated based on a federal rewrite of the HISA law in December. Also on Tuesday, separate motions for a rehearing of the case made...

Edited press release Five U.S. Senators joined five Congressmen on Wednesday to strongly urge the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to disapprove the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) proposed Anti-Doping and Medication Control Program Rule that the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (Authority) recently resubmitted, according to a press release from the National HBPA. A group of lawmakers said that the disapproval from the FTC was necessary to "avoid continued industry-wide confusion and potential inequitable enforcement." The FTC already had disapproved the medication control rule on December 12, 2022, until...

Edited Press Release Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry will be the keynote speaker at the National HBPA's annual conference Mar. 6-10 at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans' historic French Quarter, the horsemen's organization announced. The conference, being hosted by the Louisiana HPBA, takes place in conjunction with the Association of Racing Commissioners International (ARCI) Annual Meeting and Racing Integrity Conference. Landry's keynote address is to be delivered Mar. 7. He has been at the forefront of states challenging the constitutionality of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) and...

After a week of political uncertainty, the Senate has passed a version of the full year-end omnibus spending bill with language affording the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) more rule-making authority in the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA), according to a source close to the process. The language is designed to address a ruling in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals from November, which found the law as written doesn't afford the FTC enough latitude in the rule-making process. The Senate voted in favor of the bill 68-29, but it...

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has jointly filed an amendment with Senator Manchin (D-WV) that would strip references to the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) from the 4,000-page omnibus spending bill being considered this week in Congress, according to a press release Wednesday morning from the Iowa HBPA. Tuesday, it was revealed that draft language has been inserted into the full-year omnibus spending bill designed to fix what the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals called a constitutional problem with the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA), finding in November that...

Draft language has been inserted into the full-year omnibus spending bill designed to fix a constitutional problem with the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) identified by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which found in November that the law as written doesn't afford the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enough authority in the rule-making process. In short, the draft omnibus spending bill cedes the FTC--the governmental agency which ultimately signs off on any new HISA rule--new autonomy to remove, add to and tweak language in the rules constructed by the...

In an order Monday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act's (HISA) anti-doping and medication control (ADMC) program would not go into effect as scheduled Jan. 1 due to swirling legal uncertainty. "The bedrock principle of the Act is the need for uniformity," wrote the FTC in the order, adding that "the Commission's approval of the Anti-Doping and Medication Control proposed rule would not result in uniformity because the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act has been held unconstitutional by a panel of the United...