Fifth Circuit again strikes down HISA enforcement, gives horsemen win

Horsemen won another round on June 11, and the practical impact is immediate: the Fifth Circuit again knocked out HISA’s enforcement provisions, keeping investigations, subpoenas, searches, sanctions and injunction suits under a cloud as the summer meets approach. The court left the rulemaking framework standing, but said the sport’s enforcement structure still gives too much power to a private Authority and not enough real control to the Federal Trade Commission.

The decision came from Judges King, Duncan and Engelhardt on remand from the Supreme Court of the United States, which had vacated the Fifth Circuit’s earlier HISA ruling on June 30, 2025, and sent it back for reconsideration in light of FCC v. Consumers’ Research. The underlying fight began in 2021, when the National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association and 12 affiliates sued the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority and the FTC.

The panel still landed where it had before. In the court’s words, “In sum, we agree with the Horsemen that the FTC lacks adequate oversight and control over the Authority’s enforcement power.” The judges framed the core issue as whether the Authority truly functions subordinately to the FTC when it comes to enforcing HISA, and concluded that back-end review after enforcement has already happened does not fix the problem. The FTC’s general rulemaking power, the court said, cannot rewrite the statute’s plain split of enforcement authority.

For horsemen, trainers and tracks, that matters now, not just in theory. HISA remains a national racing overlay that is still being challenged in multiple federal cases, which means the people actually shipping horses, writing entries and policing the barns are once again operating with less certainty about who can investigate, who can sanction and who can stop a case once it starts. The Fifth Circuit had already found HISA’s original rulemaking structure unconstitutional in earlier litigation, and this ruling says the court’s skepticism now reaches the law’s enforcement machinery itself.

The reaction was immediate. The National HBPA said the horsemen were right that HISA “facially delegates unsupervised enforcement power to private actors.” The United States Trotting Association said the decision showed HISA was unconstitutional for a third time. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill also welcomed the ruling, underscoring that the challenge to national oversight is not confined to one horsemen’s group.

The big question now is what changes on the ground before the next major race day. The Fifth Circuit has again signaled that a private enforcement model with only limited federal oversight will not pass muster, and that leaves the sport’s integrity and safety regime headed back into the ring.