SCOTUS

When the National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association first started warning that the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act would flunk constitutional due diligence as a violation of the private nondelegation doctrine, its arguments were laughed off. The smart set scoffed that the private nondelegation doctrine was dead, a defunct relic of pre-New Deal "Lochner era" jurisprudence. The NHBPA pressed ahead anyway with the simple yet powerful point that in our constitutional system, a private entity cannot wield public powers like making and enforcing law. The Fifth Circuit agreed--twice--and now the...

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) on Monday granted a stay that will prevent the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from issuing a mandate stemming from a recent Fifth Circuit opinion that the Horseracing and Safety Integrity Act (HISA)'s enforcement mechanism is unconstitutional. The stay is to be in effect pending a decision by the Supreme Court as to whether it will take up the larger issue of whether those enforcement provisions are unconstitutional under the private nondelegation doctrine, which is a basic principle of...