A law designed to makes horse racing safer by creating and enforcing national rules governing the use of drugs and the treatment of animals is "facially unconstitutional," a federal appeals court in Louisiana ruled on Friday.
The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (HISA) was created by Congress in 2020 to replace the state-by-state patchwork of regulations following a series of high-profile doping scandals and horse deaths that rocked the industry.
HISA was challenged in court by various horseracing associations as well as officials in Texas, Louisiana and West Virginia who argued that the authority, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), had insufficient oversight."A cardinal constitutional principle is that federal power can be wielded only by the federal government.
Private entities may do so only if they are subordinate to an agency," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said."But the Authority is not subordinate to the FTC.