A federal judge in Louisville, Ky., on Wednesday granted a motion for summary judgment filed by Churchill Downs Inc. (CDI) and two of its key executives to dismiss Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert's lawsuit attempting to overturn the two-year private property ban that effectively kept him out of the Kentucky Derby in 2022 and 2023.
Rebecca Grady Jennings, district judge for U.S. District Court's western district of Kentucky, Louisville division, had previously denied Baffert's motion for a preliminary injunction in advance of this year's Kentucky Derby and dismissed claims for unlawful exclusion, unlawful conspiracy in restraint of trade, unlawful use of monopoly power, tortious interference with contractual relations and tortious interference with prospective business relations. Left unsettled before the May 24 ruling was the claim by Baffert that there was a breach of his due process rights.
The suit, filed against Churchill Downs Inc., its chairman Alex Rankin, and CEO William Carstanjen, resulted from Baffert's two-year exclusion from all CDI properties imposed by the company after Medina Spirit tested positive for the corticosteroid betamethasone following his first-place finish in the 2021 Kentucky Derby. In its announcement that Baffert was being excluded, CDI referenced multiple medication violations by Baffert in a relatively short time span. The CDI ban ends when the Churchill Downs spring-summer meet concludes on July 3.
Medina Spirit, who later in the year died after a workout at Santa Anita, was disqualified from the win, and Baffert received a separate suspension of 90 days from the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission that he served last spring.
In her memorandum opinion and order, Judge Jennings said Baffert's attorneys failed so show during a two-day evidentiary hearing Feb. 2-3 that Baffert's trainers license was “rendered valueless” because of the suspension, since he won over $1 million racing horses at other Kentucky tracks in 2022, principally Keeneland. “Therefore,” Jennings wrote, “plaintiffs cannot demonstrate that they were deprived of a property interest – a necessary element of their due process claim.
“Plaintiffs have failed to produce specific evidence creating a genuine issue of material fact that would allow a reasonable jury to find in their favor at trial. … Because plaintiffs cannot prevail on the first element of their due process claim,” she wrote, “the court will not continue to examine additional arguments.”
Clark Brewster, an attorney for Baffert, said the order for summary judgment will be appealed. “The ruling was the last hurdle cleared to enable a presentation to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which we look forward to,” Brewster said via text message.
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