U.S. Court of Appeals

The attorneys general from nine states on Thursday implored United States Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell not to use the end-of-term 'lame-duck' session of Congress to ram through legislation that would tweak non-constitutionality issues with the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) by burying the measure within a much larger bill. "It has come to our attention that you are considering proposing language related to HISA in the Defense Spending Authorization Act or other end-of-year legislation," the AGs wrote to the senior senator from Kentucky in a Dec. 8 letter....

The latest tumultuous turn in the unfolding saga of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) was delivered in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Friday, when the court ruled the law unconstitutional because it cedes too much governmental authority to a private entity, and too little rule-making input to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is charged with ultimately signing off on the law's rules. In the immediate aftermath of the decision, three legal experts weighed in for the TDN on the legal avenues open...

A panel of three judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a new, more fine-tuned order Monday in the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act Authority (HISA) lawsuit that narrows the scope of an "administrative stay" that same court had issued five days earlier. The Aug. 8 order now means that instead of the entire slate of HISA rules being re-activated in Louisiana and West Virginia (as per the Aug. 3 Appeals Court order that trumped a preliminary injunction issued July 26 by a lower...