By T. D. Thornton
The United States Supreme Court is now unlikely to decide before the end of 2024 which, if any, of the three separate cases involving the constitutionality of the Horseracing and Safety Integrity Act (HISA) the nation's highest court might consider hearing.
According to schedule changes posted online Dec. 4 on the Supreme Court dockets for cases originating out of the Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Circuits of the U.S. Court of Appeals, all three of those HISA-related “writ of certiorari” requests are now going to be considered by the justices on the same conference date, Jan. 10, 2025.
A writ of certiorari is the legal petition by which an entity asks the Supreme Court to intervene in a case after all other forms of appeal within the federal court system have been exhausted.
The writ out of the Fifth Circuit (initiated by the defendant, the HISA Authority, involving a lawsuit spearheaded by the National Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association) had not been previously assigned a spot on the Supreme Court's case distribution schedule.
The writs originating out of the Sixth Circuit (stemming from a lawsuit led by the states of Oklahoma, West Virginia and Louisiana) and Eighth Circuit (led by executives out of the Arkansas and Iowa HBPA affiliates) were both supposed to be considered by the justices at a Dec. 6 conference.
However, both the Sixth and Eighth Circuit writs came off the case distribution schedule last week, when the docket switched them to “rescheduled” without (at that time) specifying the new date.
According to the Supreme Court's website, the case distribution schedule “identifies the dates on which petitions for writs of certiorari, along with corresponding briefs in opposition and reply briefs, will be distributed to the Justices. It also identifies the dates on which those petitions are scheduled to be considered by the Justices at conference, although this schedule is subject to change.”
Following Dec. 6, the only other available case distribution conference date for 2024 is Dec. 13. After that, the Jan. 10, 2025, conference is the next one the justices are scheduled to hold.
Exactly how the Supreme Court will handle the multiple writs filed by different petitioners is unknown at this point. But the fact that they have now been grouped together for consideration on the same conference date raises the possibility that they could, in some way, be combined.
The Supreme Court could choose to individually hear (or deny hearing) any of the HISA constitutionality cases. Or, if it deems the questions of law are similar, the Supreme Court could decide to consolidate them into one larger case for the purpose of coming up with one common judgment that addresses all of the legal issues that have been raised.
The Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Circuit appeals courts have all agreed that HISA's rulemaking structure is constitutional. Only the Fifth Circuit has disagreed, in part, by opining that HISA's enforcement provisions are unconstitutional.
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