The most consequential law in American horse racing spent the last year in and out of federal court, and in June 2026 it took another hit. The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, known as HISA, sets national rules for medication, drug testing, and racetrack safety across Thoroughbred racing. A federal appeals court has now ruled, again, that the way HISA enforces those rules is unconstitutional. The rules themselves still stand, the program is still operating, and the fight looks increasingly likely to land at the Supreme Court. For anyone who cares about how horses are treated, and about who gets to hold power over horsemen, it is worth understanding what is actually being argued.
What HISA Is and Why It Exists
Congress passed HISA in 2020 to replace a patchwork of state racing rules with a single national standard. Before it, medication limits, testing, and safety protocols varied from state to state, which made consistent enforcement nearly impossible. Under the law, a private body called the Authority writes the rules, and the Federal Trade Commission is supposed to oversee them. The program brought in uniform anti-doping standards and a Racetrack Safety Program that most of the industry now operates under. Its stated purpose is straightforward: fewer breakdowns, cleaner competition, and a sport that can defend itself to a skeptical public.
The Latest Court Ruling
In June 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that HISA's enforcement provisions violate what is known as the private nondelegation doctrine. In plain terms, the court held that a private organization was handed too much government power, the power to investigate, subpoena, search, fine, and seek injunctions, without enough real oversight from the Federal Trade Commission. Importantly, the court did not strike down HISA's ability to write rules. It objected specifically to how those rules are enforced. This was not the first time the Fifth Circuit has sided against HISA's enforcement structure, and the case traces back to a 2021 lawsuit brought by the National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association.
A Circuit Split Headed for the Supreme Court
The legal picture is tangled because different appeals courts have reached different conclusions. The Sixth Circuit has upheld HISA, while the Fifth Circuit has ruled against its enforcement powers. When federal appeals courts disagree on whether a national law is constitutional, that disagreement, called a circuit split, is exactly the kind of question the Supreme Court exists to settle. The Supreme Court had already sent these cases back to the lower courts once, after deciding a related case on agency authority. HISA, led by chief executive Lisa Lazarus, has said the program remains the law of the land and continues to run its testing and safety operations while the appeals play out.
The Safety Numbers Behind the Fight
Lost in the legal drama is what the program reports it has accomplished, and it is worth stating fairly. In its 2025 annual metrics report, HISA said racing fatalities at tracks under its rules came in at about 1.04 deaths per 1,000 starts, a slight uptick from the record low of 0.90 the year before, but still close to half the rate recorded when national tracking began in 2009. Tracks operating outside HISA's rules reported a higher rate. For the first time, HISA also published training fatality data, and it reported that riding-crop violations fell by roughly a quarter year over year. The trend line on horse deaths has been moving in the right direction, and that matters. A worthy goal, though, is not the same thing as a lawful structure, and the court was ruling on the second, not the first.
The Real Question: Power Without a Check
Strip away the racing-specific detail and the case comes down to an old question: how much authority can be handed to a body that answers to almost no one? The court's objection was not that HISA's rules are bad. It was that a private authority had been given the machinery of government enforcement, the power to investigate, subpoena, search, fine, and seek injunctions, while the federal agency meant to supervise it could largely only watch until after the fact. That is the part that should catch the attention of every horse owner, whatever they think of racing. An enforcement apparatus, once built, staffed, and funded, does not tend to sit still. It looks for things to enforce, it expands its own definitions over time, and the further it operates from real accountability, the more it can come to treat the people it regulates as suspects to be managed rather than citizens to be trusted.
Why It Matters Beyond the Racetrack
We are not a racing barn, and most of the horses we ride will never see a starting gate. So why follow this? Because HISA is the country's clearest test of a template: a single national body with sweeping authority over how horses are medicated, kept, and shown, and thin oversight of how it uses that authority. Safety is a genuinely worthy goal, and the numbers are real. But the recurring lesson of American regulation is that the goal is the door and the power is what walks through it. We want fewer breakdowns and cleaner sport. We are also wary of any structure that concentrates that much control with that little check, because the design that governs racing today is the design that could be pointed at the rest of us tomorrow. The answer is not that there should be no standards. It is that standards should carry genuine accountability, and be set by people who answer to the horsemen they govern.