The Horseracing and Safety Integrity Act (HISA) Authority and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have both petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States to have another look at HISA's constitutionality, specifically as it pertains to an opinion issued twice out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that ruled HISA's rulemaking structure is constitutional, but its enforcement provisions are not.The separate HISA Authority and FTC filings, dated last week but just docketed Aug. 17, were the expected next moves in an ongoing lawsuit that dates to 2021 and has already once resulted in the Supreme Court telling three lower appeals courts to re-examine earlier decisions in light of a similar case that the Supreme Court had ruled on in 2025.The original litigation out of the Fifth Circuit was spearheaded five years ago by the National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association (NHBPA) and 12 of its affiliates against the HISA Authority and the FTC.For the better part of the last five years, both sides in this lawsuit–and in two similar federal cases challenging HISA that also reached the Supreme Court level but were remanded–have sparred over the non-delegation doctrine, which bans Congress from delegating legislative power to federal agencies without an “intelligible principle” to guide the exercise of agency discretion.Three separate appeals courts–the Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Circuits–have all agreed that HISA's rulemaking structure is constitutional. Only the Fifth Circuit has disagreed, in part, by consistently opining that HISA's enforcement provisions are unconstitutional.“All parties agree that the Fifth Circuit's outlier judgment warrants review,” stated HISA's Aug. 10, 2026 writ of certiorari, which is the formal term for asking the Supreme Court to take up a case. “Given the intractable conflict over the facial constitutionality of HISA's enforcement provisions, only this Court can provide an authoritative nationwide ruling on that issue of legal and practical importance.”The HISA petition continued: “Two administrations have supported HISA. Two bipartisan Congresses have embraced it, including through an amendment in late 2022 that fortified the FTC's oversight. And all but one of the federal courts that have resolved an identical challenge to the amended statute have reached the same conclusion: HISA is constitutional.“The Fifth Circuit contradicted that consensus, holding that HISA's enforcement provisions facially violate the private-nondelegation doctrine. That decision–embracing the most extreme assumptions about the HISA regime, including hypothetical applications of provisions that have never been exercised–ignores this Court's caution against wiping out broad swaths of federal legislation on a facial basis. It also disregards the many ways Congress purposefully subordinated the Authority's implementation of HISA to the FTC's substantial oversight.“Moreover, the decision [issued June 11] brushes aside cautionary signals this Court already issued in this very case,” the HISA petition stated.TDN emailed Eric Hamelback, the NHBPA's chief executive officer, requesting comment on the HISA and FTC petitions to the Supreme Court. No reply was received prior to deadline for this story.A year and a half ago, the three cases out of the Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Circuits had all been appealed up to the Supreme Court level.Then, on June 30, 2025, the Supreme Court issued nearly identical “summary dispositions” for all three lawsuits involving the constitutionality of HISA, telling each respective appeals court that it wanted them to re-examine their rulings in light of a relevant decision the Supreme Court had just issued on June 27, 2025.The new precedent that the Supreme Court told the Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Circuits to consider involved a case titled Federal Communications Commission (FCC) vs. Consumers' Research.In that case, the Supreme Court justices, by a 6-3 vote, rejected arguments that the funding mechanism for a service that provides subsidized telecommunications services for low-income customers, rural hospitals, schools, and libraries violated the non-delegation doctrine. The Supreme Court also rejected a claim that the FCC delegated too much authority to a private company to administer the program.The Sixth Circuit was the first to act on the Supreme Court's remand in a case led by the states of Oklahoma, West Virginia and Louisiana. On Dec. 17, 2025, the Sixth Circuit upheld the constitutionality of HISA for a second time.Those states (plus a handful of other plaintiffs who first signed on to the original lawsuit back in 2021) have already asked the Supreme Court to re-examine that second Sixth Circuit constitutionality ruling, via a writ of certiorari dated May 15, 2026.In it, the states and the other plaintiffs claim that the Sixth Circuit “erroneously” analyzed the application of the private non-delegation doctrine to the Act.In the Eighth Circuit anti-HISA case, the plaintiffs are executives with the Arkansas and Iowa HBPA chapters.That lawsuit involves a 2024 appeals court opinion that had affirmed a ruling out of a lower federal court in Arkansas denying a preliminary injunction the horsemen had sought to halt HISA and its Anti-Doping and Medication Control (ADMC) program.Now approaching the 14-month mark since the Supreme Court remanded the case, the Eighth Circuit is the lone remaining appeals court yet to issue any revised HISA ruling. There have been no entries on that court's docket for this case since June 17.The post HISA Authority and FTC Again Ask Supreme Court to Take up ‘Outlier’ Constitutionality Opinion appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.