What Is HISA in Horse Racing? An Owner’s Guide to the Federal Safety Regulator

HISA is horse racing’s federal safety regulator — the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, created by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020 and supervised by the Federal Trade Commission. Its rules run at 41 racetracks in 19 states, and they arrive in two parts: the Racetrack Safety Program, live since July 1, 2022, and the Anti-Doping and Medication Control Program, live since May 22, 2023. In 2025, tracks under HISA rules reported 1.04 racing fatalities per 1,000 starts — put the other way, 99.90% of starts finished without one. For an owner, that is the practical part: your horse’s medication windows, workout records and pre-race inspections now answer to one national rulebook instead of a different one in every state you ship to.

What HISA is, in plain English

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority is a private body that Congress created in 2020 and charged with writing and enforcing one uniform set of Thoroughbred racing rules across the United States, under Federal Trade Commission oversight. It replaced a patchwork in which each state racing commission set its own medication limits, riding-crop rules and safety standards, so a horse could be legal in one jurisdiction and in violation two states away. HISA works through two programs. The Racetrack Safety Program, in force since July 1, 2022, governs racing and training surfaces, veterinary oversight, pre-race inspection, riding-crop use and injury reporting. The Anti-Doping and Medication Control Program, in force since May 22, 2023, sets the banned-substance and controlled-medication rules and is enforced by a separate organization, the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit. HISA rules are currently in effect at 41 racetracks in 19 states. Horses racing or working at those tracks are what HISA calls Covered Horses.

Why HISA exists, and why it matters to your horse

HISA exists because American racing regulated itself state by state for a century and could not produce a single trustworthy national safety number. Before the Act, there was no uniform medication threshold, no uniform whip rule, no uniform requirement that a horse be inspected the morning of a race by a veterinarian answering to the same standard everywhere. There was also no consequence that travelled. A trainer suspended in one state could sometimes keep operating in another.

The Jockey Club had already built the measuring instrument. Its Equine Injury Database began collecting national fatality data in 2009, which is why every claim about racing getting safer is dated from that year rather than from HISA’s own launch. That distinction matters if you are trying to work out what HISA itself changed: the improvement began well before the regulator existed.

For you, the owner, HISA changed three practical things. Your horse’s veterinary and treatment records became part of a national system rather than a barn filing cabinet. Your trainer became accountable to one medication rulebook regardless of where they ship. And injuries at covered tracks are now reported into a dataset that gets published, which means the risk you are taking on is at least measurable.

HISA, HIWU and your state commission: who does what

Three different bodies touch your horse, and owners routinely confuse them: HISA writes the rules, HIWU enforces the anti-doping rules, and the state racing commission still licenses you and runs the meet. Getting this straight tells you who to call when something goes wrong.

Who governs what in American racing

Body	What it is	What it controls	When an owner deals with it
HISA	Private authority created by federal statute, overseen by the FTC	Writes the racetrack safety and medication rulebooks; collects injury and workout data	Rarely direct — you feel HISA through the rules your trainer follows
HIWU	Enforcement arm of HISA’s anti-doping program	Sample collection and testing, laboratory accreditation, investigations, prosecutions	If a horse in your barn returns a positive test or an investigation opens
State racing commission	State government agency, one per racing state	Owner and trainer licensing, wagering, race dates, purse rules, on-track conduct	Constantly — your owner’s license and your purse money run through here

The short rule: HISA and HIWU decide what may go into your horse and what condition it must be in to race. Your state commission decides whether you may own it and how you get paid.

Where HISA rules actually apply

HISA rules are in effect at 41 racetracks across 19 states, which means a meaningful share of American racing sits outside them. Racing continues in Louisiana, Texas and West Virginia under state rules rather than HISA’s, and those three are among the jurisdictions that have fought the Act in court. If you are choosing where to base a horse, this is a real variable rather than a technicality — and it interacts with the tax and purse questions covered in our state-by-state look at where to own and race.

The 19 states where HISA rules are in effect

Region	States under HISA rules
Northeast and Mid-Atlantic	New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia
Midwest	Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota
South and Southeast	Kentucky, Florida, Arkansas, Oklahoma
West and Southwest	California, Arizona, New Mexico, Washington

Two things to notice. The list covers the states where most serious money runs, so if you buy into a partnership racing in Kentucky, New York, California or Florida, you are inside HISA’s covered jurisdictions. And Oklahoma appears on the covered list while also being party to litigation against the Authority, which tells you the fight is legal and political rather than a simple map of who has opted in.

What the safety numbers actually say

In 2025, racetracks operating under HISA rules recorded 1.04 racing-related fatalities per 1,000 starts, against 1.21 at American tracks outside HISA. HISA published those figures in its 2025 Annual Metrics Report on March 24, 2026, alongside a training-fatality rate that had never been reported nationally before.

Racing and training fatality rates in 2025

Measure	2025 rate	What it counts
Racing fatalities, HISA-covered tracks	1.04 per 1,000 starts	Deaths related to racing at tracks under HISA rules
Racing fatalities, non-HISA US tracks	1.21 per 1,000 starts	Same measure at American tracks outside HISA
Racing fatalities, North American average	1.07 per 1,000 starts	Blended figure across reporting tracks
Training fatalities, HISA-covered tracks	0.55 per 1,000 workouts	Deaths in training — reported nationally for the first time in 2025
Starts completed without a fatality	99.90%	The same racing figure stated as a completion rate
Active Covered Horses	71,443	Unique horses with a recorded start or workout under HISA

The data contained in this year’s report shows that uniform national safety standards are working.

Lisa Lazarus, Chief Executive, HISA, in the 2025 Annual Metrics Report

I would read those numbers more carefully than that quote does, and the reason is not hostility to HISA. It is that the regulator is reporting on its own performance, and the comparison it leads with does not carry the weight people give it. A gap of 0.17 fatalities per 1,000 starts between covered and uncovered tracks is a difference of roughly one horse in every 6,000 starts. The covered and uncovered groups are also not comparable populations: they differ by state, surface, purse level, field quality and horse age. Louisiana, Texas and West Virginia are not a random control group.

The longer trend is the stronger claim. A fatality rate that has fallen by nearly half since 2009 is a real change in the sport, measured by an instrument The Jockey Club built before HISA existed. The honest framing is that racing has been getting safer for fifteen years and HISA inherited that trend, tightened the rules and — importantly for a buyer — started publishing training deaths, which used to be invisible. If you are weighing what can happen to a horse you own, our guide to what happens when a racehorse gets injured and the harder piece on why racehorses get put down deal with the part these rates only summarize.

The training figure deserves a moment on its own. At 0.55 deaths per 1,000 workouts, morning training is not a rounding error against racing risk, and 2025 was the first year anyone could say so with national data. Owners pay training bills every month and watch works far more often than races. That number is the one I would want in front of me before signing a training agreement.

The rules that touch your horse day to day

HISA’s rules reach your horse mainly through medication timing, veterinary records and race-day inspection — three areas where your trainer acts and you carry the consequences. The anti-doping program divides substances into those banned outright at all times and controlled medications permitted in treatment but restricted before a race. The practical effect is a withdrawal calendar: a legitimate therapeutic treatment can make a horse ineligible if it is given too close to a start.

The safety side is less discussed and closer to the horse. Pre-race veterinary inspection, workout and treatment records, riding-crop limits and reporting obligations all sit in the Racetrack Safety Program. Enforcement here is not cosmetic: riding-crop violations fell 24.8% year over year in 2025, which is what a rule looks like when it changes behavior rather than merely existing.

I am deliberately not reciting specific withdrawal times or penalty schedules here. They are technical, they get revised, and an owner who works from a summary in an article rather than the current rulebook is the owner most likely to be surprised. Read the programs themselves at HISA and HIWU, and make your trainer walk you through how they manage the calendar.

HISA is still in court, and what that means for you

HISA’s constitutionality is unresolved: two federal appeals courts have now reached opposite conclusions, and the Authority is heading back to the Supreme Court. In June 2025 the Supreme Court sent three HISA cases back to the lower courts to be reconsidered in light of its decision in FCC v. Consumers’ Research. The Sixth Circuit then upheld the Act in December 2025, while the Fifth Circuit ruled in June 2026 — for the third time — that HISA’s enforcement provisions are unconstitutional. The Fifth Circuit has since agreed to hold off on its mandate while HISA appeals.

What this means in practice: the rules are operating today at all 41 covered tracks. The litigation concerns HISA’s enforcement powers, not whether your horse must pass its pre-race inspection tomorrow morning. Plan on compliance, and treat the legal outcome as a question about the regulator’s future shape rather than a reason to wait.

This is a live dispute and I am not going to predict it. What I will say is that the direction of travel in racing regulation has been toward national standards for fifteen years, across changes of administration and several court losses, and no serious party is arguing for a return to fifty separate medication rulebooks. Whatever the Supreme Court does to HISA’s enforcement structure, the uniform-rules idea has outlasted every attempt to kill it so far.

Due-diligence questions to ask a trainer about HISA

The most useful thing HISA gives a prospective owner is a set of questions that a well-run barn can answer immediately and a sloppy one cannot. Compliance is documentation, and documentation is either there or it is not. Ask these before you sign, not after your horse ships:

1. Have you or anyone in this barn had a HIWU ruling? What was it, and what changed afterwards?
2. Who keeps the treatment and veterinary records here, and can I see how my horse’s entries are logged?
3. How do you manage medication withdrawal timing against an intended race date?
4. Which of the tracks you run at are covered by HISA, and which are not?
5. If a horse of mine is scratched at inspection, how and when do I hear about it, and from whom?
6. Who is your regular veterinarian, and who signs off on a horse being fit to run?
7. If a positive test happened, what would the process look like for me as the owner?

Question one is the one people flinch from asking. Do not skip it. A ruling is not automatically disqualifying — some are procedural and some are genuinely contested — but a trainer who is straightforward about one is telling you something valuable, and a trainer who bristles is telling you something too. This sits inside the wider vetting job covered in our checklist on how to choose a racehorse trainer.

What HISA doesn’t cover

HISA regulates racing safety and medication, and nothing about your commercial position as an owner — which is where new owners most often assume protection they do not have. It is worth being blunt about the boundaries:

• Your syndicate or partnership agreement. Fee structures, management charges and exit terms are contract law and, where shares are securities, securities regulation. HISA has no view on any of it.
• Your trainer’s billing. Day rates, mark-ups on veterinary work and what a bill has to itemize sit outside HISA entirely.
• Aftercare. What happens to your horse when it stops racing is not a HISA obligation.
• Non-covered tracks and non-Thoroughbred racing. The rules follow the covered tracks, not the country.
• Your horse’s individual soundness. A pre-race inspection is a screen, not a guarantee, and it is not a substitute for your own veterinary advice.

A regulator that makes the sport safer does not make ownership economically safer. Those are separate problems, and the second one is still yours — the running-cost arithmetic in our month-by-month breakdown of what a thoroughbred costs to keep is unaffected by anything in the HISA rulebook.

Questions owners ask about HISA

Is HISA federal law?

The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act of 2020 is federal law. HISA itself is a private authority created by that law and supervised by the Federal Trade Commission, which is precisely the arrangement being litigated: the argument against it is that Congress handed regulatory power to a private body. The Fifth Circuit has agreed with that argument as it applies to HISA’s enforcement provisions; the Sixth Circuit has not.

Does HISA apply in every state?

No. HISA rules are in effect at 41 racetracks in 19 states. Thoroughbred racing continues outside HISA in Louisiana, Texas and West Virginia, and HISA’s own 2025 report puts the fatality rate at non-covered American tracks at 1.21 per 1,000 starts against 1.04 at covered ones. Ask your trainer which of their tracks are covered — it determines which rulebook applies to your horse on any given day.

What happens to my horse if my trainer gets a HIWU ruling?

That depends on the substance, the circumstances and the stage of the process, and the consequences are set out in HISA’s anti-doping rules rather than in general principle — which is exactly why you should ask your trainer the question in advance instead of learning the answer during an active case. The two questions to put to your trainer in advance are who the rules treat as responsible, and what can happen to the horse and to a purse already earned. If this scenario matters to you, read the current rules at HIWU and get the process explained to you by your own adviser before you need it.

Has HISA actually made racing safer?

Racing has become substantially safer since 2009, with the fatality rate down by nearly half on The Jockey Club’s Equine Injury Database measure, and the rate at HISA-covered tracks in 2025 was 1.04 per 1,000 starts against 1.21 at non-covered tracks. How much of that improvement HISA caused is a harder question than either its supporters or its opponents admit: the trend began more than a decade before the Authority existed, and covered and non-covered tracks differ in too many ways to treat the gap as a clean measurement. The defensible statement is that the sport is safer than it was, that HISA has tightened and standardized the rules, and that it has made more of the risk visible — including training deaths, which nobody counted nationally until 2025.

What I would do with this as a buyer

Treat HISA as a floor, not a warranty. It means the barn your horse lives in is working to one national medication rulebook, that somebody inspects your horse before it runs, and that when something goes wrong it gets counted. That is more than American racing offered a buyer in 2019, and it is considerably less than the protection some prospectuses imply when they mention federal oversight in passing.

The two facts worth carrying away are specific. Your horse’s rulebook depends on which of the 41 covered tracks it runs at. And 0.55 training deaths per 1,000 workouts is now a published number, which means the risk you are buying is one you can look up rather than one you have to take on trust.

— Race Horse Ownership 101