Louisiana | Horse Racing Free Tips

Mr. Money Relocated to Louisiana

MGSW & GISP Mr. Money (Goldencents–Plenty O'Toole, by Tiznow) will relocate from Florida to Louisiana's Clear Creek Stud. Spendthrift Farm also is a partner in Mr. Money with owner Chester Thomas.

“I just really like the way the Louisiana program is heading,” said Thomas. “I think Mr. Money has everything it takes to be a successful sire, and I believe having him at a top farm in a growing regional market gives him the best chance to show what he can do. Most of my horses race in New Orleans in the winter anyway, and I'm sure going to have a lot of Louisiana-bred Mr. Money babies. I thought I might just as well take advantage of having Louisiana-sired as well as Louisiana-born Mr. Moneys.”

Mr. Money won six of 18 starts and amassed over $1.3 million in earnings. Five of those six victories came in Grade III events and he also finished second in the GI Pennsylvania Derby.

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Op/Ed: Robert M. Beck, Jr.

During one of the most politically polarizing times in our country's history, Congress passed the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020 (HISA) with bipartisan support. What did this rare display of unity say about the health of the Thoroughbred racing industry? To say it kindly: the industry needed help. HISA handed over the reins for regulating Thoroughbred safety and anti-doping and medication control matters to a private, self-regulatory organization named the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (Authority). Before HISA, Thoroughbred racing in the United States was regulated by a patchwork of individual state racing commissions with different, and often conflicting, rules. HISA represents a significant change for an industry used to parochial and inconsistent governance–and even more disorderly enforcement. Perhaps more important, HISA is the solution to stop horse racing from going the way of the circus and dog racing, as many commentators and animal rights activists have warned.

Sadly, some in the industry have chafed at Congress' mandate that Thoroughbred racing must be safe, clean, and fair. Since the passage of HISA, the Authority has been attacked on all sides through meritless lawsuits that willfully ignore more than 80 years of binding legal precedent. Nothing about HISA or the Authority's structure is unique, let alone legally questionable. HISA is modeled after a law called the Maloney Act of 1938, which designated what would later become the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) to oversee financial regulation under the oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Like FINRA, the Authority is self-funded, independent, and overseen by a federal agency. In other words, the Maloney Act and HISA are constitutional for the same reasons: Congress is well within its power to delegate its regulatory authority to private entities so long as a government agency retains ultimate decision-making authority as to rules and enforcement; Private organizations such as the Authority and FINRA are not subject to constitutional restraints on appointments and removal of board members; and Private self-funding of such organizations does not unconstitutionally compel states to enforce federal law.

For those keeping score, the Authority is winning the battles against its detractors. Two Federal District Courts–one in Kentucky and another in Texas–have soundly rejected the constitutional challenges lodged against HISA and the Authority, and the reviewing appellate courts are expected to affirm these decisions. No court has found HISA unconstitutional. Having lost their challenges to the Authority's constitutionality, the Authority's opponents have resorted to nitpicking the Authority's implementation of its rules. Thus far, these attempts have also failed. In one case, filed in Louisiana Federal District Court, the plaintiffs argued that the Authority failed to satisfy certain technical requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act. Significantly, the Louisiana Federal District Court found zero constitutional violations, but it did initially agree with the plaintiffs that the Authority's definition of “covered horse” and its search and seizure rule expanded beyond the scope the statute ever so slightly. Practically speaking, this portion of the ruling has no impact, because the Authority has already revised one of the rules and the other rule is revised in the ADMC rules. The District Court also questioned the Authority's rule on funding and the length of the notice and comment period, though it recognized that any of the claimed deficiencies could be easily remedied by the Authority even if the Authority is ultimately unsuccessful on the merits. It was perhaps not surprising then that the Authority recently sought and received an emergency stay of enforcement of a Louisiana Federal District Court's order halting implementation of the Authority's rules in Louisiana and West Virginia. This stay makes clear that the Authority's safety rules will continue to be enforced nation-wide.

Unfortunately, during the interim, the Authority's enforcement of its rules in Louisiana and West Virginia was delayed. Racing in both states suffered. For example, one jockey in Louisiana whipped a horse 17 times in one race, 11 times more than the Authority's strike limit. Under the Authority's rules, such behavior is prohibited and would have been swiftly and uniformly punished. But horses are not the only ones suffering as a result of these meritless lawsuits. A fourth federal lawsuit challenging the Authority and HISA was filed in Texas at the end of July. It recycles many of the failed legal claims. Like the cases that came before it (and those that will come after it), the new lawsuit merely serves as a distraction and a waste of industry resources. Ironically, under HISA, horsemen and racetracks will be the ones who bear the brunt of these additional legal costs. It is clear that litigation against the Authority will continue to burden the industry and threaten the safety and integrity of our equine and human athletes. The Authority is doing this good work despite the distractions of the ongoing litigation, and it continues to win the courtroom battles. Sadly, the Authority's legal costs to defend these lawsuits will only increase the costs to all racing participants, horsemen included.

Beck is an equine lawyer and member of Stites & Harbison, PLLC in Lexington, Kentucky. He previously served 7 1/2 years as the Chairman of the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission.

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HISA Seeks Stay After Louisiana, West Virginia Ruling

Just six days after Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) opponents won a round in court in which a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction that halted implementation of HISA rules going into effect in Louisiana and West Virginia, HISA and the Federal Trade Commission were back in court Monday filing an emergency motion for a stay pending appeal.

The motion was filed in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

The filing from HISA maintains that when granting the preliminary injunction, the court erred in regards to the length of the period required for public comment. Lawyers for HISA contend that the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees HISA, has provided 14 days for public comment following its publication of proposed rules, which does not violate any rules. They contend that the “court mistakenly believed required the Commission to provide a minimum 30-day comment period.”

The filing continues: “A stay is warranted because that ruling rests on legal error and does not reflect a sound balancing of the equities. The APA (Administrative Procedure Act) imposes no minimum comment period, and the district court plainly erred in concluding otherwise.”

When granting an injunction to the plaintiffs, which included the Jockeys' Guild and the states of West Virginia and Louisiana, Judge Terry Doughty of U.S. District Court (Western District of Louisiana) did not appear to consider the public comment period a major factor in his decision. Instead, he focused on the plaintiffs allegations that HISA was causing them irreparable harm and that an injunction was needed while still other courts were deciding the constitutionality of the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Act.

“Here, there is an obvious link between the HISA rules and Plaintiffs' alleged injuries,” Doughty wrote. “All the above alleged injuries are 'fairly traceable' to the rules enacted thus far by HISA and the FTC.”

Borrowing a page from their adversaries, HISA attorneys wrote that if they are not granted a stay and HISA regulations cannot immediately be implemented in West Virginia and Louisiana that “will cause grave and irreparable harm to the horseracing industry and the public in contravention of Congress's clear intent.” They called Doughty's decision a case of “flagrant judicial overreach.”

Two separate federal courts have already dismissed lawsuits from the same plaintiffs that include similar arguments made before Doughty's court and question whether or not HISA is constitutional. Both courts ruled in favor of HISA but those decisions have been appealed.

“The preliminary injunction is unlikely to survive appeal and, in the meantime, will cause irreparable damage to the Authority's ability to implement the Act in a timely and orderly fashion,” HISA's court filing reads.

The HISA filing relies on the same arguments that gave birth to the Horse Racing Integrity and Safety Act, that when it comes to integrity and safety, the industry was adrift, in need of change and that the best way to accomplish that was through a central authority.

“The importance of this program cannot be overstated as [the Authority] build[s] on advances the industry has already

made by implementing national, uniform rules and regulations, increasing accountability, and using data- and research-driven solutions to enhance the safety of our horses and jockeys,” the filing reads.

The filing concludes: “This Court should stay the order pending appeal as soon as possible, but no later than Aug. 5, 2022 (as the harm from the injunction mounts with each racing day).

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Restraining Order Denied In HISA Lawsuit

A federal judge has denied a motion for a temporary restraining order in a lawsuit designed to keep the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) rules from going into effect.

The order, dated June 30 but posted to the court docket on the morning of July 1, the effective date for HISA's implementation, was handed down in the aftermath of a 35-minute Thursday afternoon conference call that was hastily arranged at the urgent request of lead plaintiffs from the states of Louisiana and West Virginia in their suit against HISA and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) representatives.

“Participants discussed the Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction pending before the Court,” wrote Judge Terry Doughty of U.S. District Court (Western District of Louisiana). “Plaintiffs and Defendants both expressed their views on the pending motion. The Court also expressed its view, which is that issuing a temporary restraining order regarding an Act of Congress would be inappropriate.”

The plaintiffs had argued in court filings that a restraining order was needed to stave off the “irreparable harm” from “illegal rules” and the resulting “chaos created by HISA.”

The Department of Justice, representing the FTC, responded with its own court filing that stated the plaintiffs' “eleventh-hour challenge” to a set of HISA rules that have been publicly known to be going into effect for at least three months is “an emergency of their own making.”

The judge also wrote that the two-week briefing schedule set by the court on Thursday will “remain in effect with regard to the Motion for Preliminary Injunction. The Court will decide the Motion on briefs. If the Court determines that oral arguments are necessary in order to make its decision, oral arguments will be set.”

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