TwinSpires exits Texas again after lawsuit is voluntarily dismissed

TwinSpires has gone dark in Texas again, shutting off online horse-race wagering for customers after a fast-moving legal fight that ended, for now, with Texas dropping its lawsuit without prejudice. For horseplayers, the immediate loss is simple and blunt: the easiest betting channel is closed again, and wagering is once more limited to the in-person routes Texas law has long allowed at tracks and simulcast facilities.

The latest round started when TwinSpires reactivated Texas wagering in early February 2026, then suspended bets again on Feb. 27 after the Texas Racing Commission sent a cease-and-desist letter dated Feb. 7 to United Tote president Andrew Archibald. Texas and the commission filed suit in Collin County District Court on Feb. 24, accusing Churchill Downs and its wagering operation of helping Texans get around state law and invoking the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act. The filing also raised the stakes with possible penalties of up to $10,000 per violation, or as much as $250,000 per violation involving consumers age 65 or older.

Churchill Downs, TwinSpires and United Tote removed the case to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on March 30, arguing that the Interstate Horseracing Act of 1978 exclusively governs interstate wagering on horse races. That move turned a state enforcement case into a broader jurisdictional fight, with the company leaning on a December 2025 Sixth Circuit ruling in the Michigan dispute as support for federal preemption over some state restrictions on advance-deposit wagering.

Texas racing interests had already signaled they wanted TwinSpires stopped. Sam Houston Race Park general manager Bryan Pettigrew and Texas Thoroughbred Association executive director Tracy Sheffield publicly urged the commission to block the bets, reflecting a broader in-state view that the reopening threatened local racing rather than helping it. That tension sits at the center of the market problem: online handle can be a growth engine, but in Texas the benefit is split against tracks and horsemen who worry outside wagering outlets siphon money away from the state’s own ecosystem.

The legal backdrop makes the outage look less like a one-off and more like another chapter in a long Texas fight over who gets to bet, where, and under whose rules. A 2013 challenge over the same issue ended with Judge James R. Nowlin backing the Texas Racing Commission, and a legal summary of that case says the in-person wagering requirement had been on the books since 1986. Texas horseplayers are boxed out again, and the market is left with the same unresolved question: whether legal online horse betting can ever find stable ground in a state that has repeatedly forced it back behind the track gates.