HISA refers to the “Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act.” This Act creates a Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority (“Authority”) as a private self-regulatory organization. The Authority must develop rules related to horseracing, including anti-doping, medication control and racetrack safety rules. Predictably, it is already in trouble.

REUTERS reports:

(Reuters) — A federal judge on Tuesday granted Louisiana and West Virginia’s request to halt implementation of the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (HISA) in those states until a wider lawsuit challenging its constitutionality is decided.

U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty granted the states a preliminary injunction, saying that the threatened harm to plaintiffs outweighed that of the defendants and that the decision “will not undermine the public interest.”

The defendants include the HISA Authority, which is charged with setting up the nationwide structure under which race horses will be registered and drug tested under the law, replacing the previous, state-by-state regulatory system.

“This Court is only ruling on the adoption of the rules by HISA, not the constitutionality of the Act,” he wrote. The Louisiana and West Virginia State Racing Commissions did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

HISA passed in late 2020 and puts anti-doping/medication control and safety programs under the umbrella of the independent, non-governmental HISA as opposed to individual state racing commissions.

Animal rights activists blasted the ruling.

(Reporting by Rory Carroll in Los Angeles; Editing by Toby Davis;)

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So it begins. We are not surprised of course. It is so damn typical of American horse racing.

Some are saying that the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act is the sport’s “last chance at survival.” If you care anything at all about horses, why would you want horse racing to survive? You might ask the animal rights “activists” who blasted the ruling.

In the meantime, the optimistic Lisa Lazarus, CEO of HISA states:

“The reality is that the majority of racing participants support the Authority’s mission to protect those who play by the rules and hold those who fail to do so accountable in order to keep our equine and human athletes safe and the competition fair.”

She must be kidding. Who plays by the rules in horseracing? Insofar as we can see, racing folks who are acting like they are all for HISA are simply desperate to stay afloat any way they can . . . even that.

Death and Disarray

Why do we loathe it so much? Because of the death and disarray racing brings to the lives of the horses it uses.

Go to Horseracing Wrongs to see the true impact of racing on the American racehorse: the death and disarray it brings. The site’s main feature and the most chilling is the running total of racehorses killed on a routine basis. The numbers are shocking.

See the kill list so far for 2022 here »

“*Horses — naturally social, innately mobile animals — kept locked, alone, in tiny 12×12 stalls for over 23 hours a day is also, in a word, evil*.” — Dr. Richard Ryder.

Before we go, we point out the following. Besides the physical suffering, the injuries, maiming, breakdowns and deaths that happen to racehorses during training and competing, there is this.

Dr. Richard Ryder, British psychologist and one of animal rights’ true giants, states: “Pain [suffering] is the one and only true evil. Yes, even worse than death.”

Then there is this.

Racehorses also live unnatural lives virtually throughout their existence. calls this to our attention, “the everyday, unremitting cruelty of confinement and isolation.”

Dr. Ryder adds, “horses — naturally social, innately mobile animals — kept locked, alone, in tiny 12×12 stalls for over 23 hours a day is also, in a word, evil.”

What will or can HISA do about that? Nothing that we can see.

Featured Image: Gavel, Scales of Justice, Law Books composite. Source: Unknown.