Iowa HBPA Calls Out HISA’s Legal Fees Duplication at $1,500 an Hour

The Iowa HBPA is calling out the non-profit Horseracing Integrity & Safety Authority (HISA) for needlessly paying millions of dollars to outside legal counsel for work that is virtually indistinguishable from filings and oral arguments made by the Department of Justice in defending the Federal Trade Commission in litigation challenging HISA’s constitutionality.

The Iowa Horsemen’s Benevolent & Protective Association is asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to eliminate or drastically reduce the $3 million line item in HISA’s 2026 budget for litigation expenses. In its online comments filed with the FTC about the HISA budget, the horsemen’s group says most of the $3 million is going to a pricey Washington D.C. law firm to reproduce the work already being done by the Department of Justice.

“… And DOJ has done an excellent job—better than we would prefer, frankly. If HISA were expending its funds wisely—maybe if it were spending its own money instead of the horsemen’s—one would think that the nonprofit corporation would be coordinating with DOJ and filing briefs that merely said ‘yes, what they said,’” the horsemen’s group says. “That is not what has been happening. Instead of relying on the DOJ’s excellent work, HISA has retained an expensive DC law firm, Akin Gump, to reinvent the wheel. In every one of these cases, HISA has paid Akin Gump attorneys millions of dollars to draft briefs and make oral arguments that are indistinguishable from the FTC’s briefs and oral arguments. This is not legal necessity; it is duplication at $1,500 an hour.”*

“ … Every single hour billed at those rates is more than many Iowa trainers and jockeys earn in an entire week—yet horsemen are forced to foot the bill for that extravagance. The point isn’t that these lawyers overcharge. The point is that HISA has no business hiring them to duplicate DOJ’s work. If HISA were acting responsibly, it would have insisted that its counsel coordinate with DOJ, narrow their role, and avoid redundant filings.”

The Iowa HBPA comments were filed in September. The FTC has yet to act on approving the 2026 HISA budget.

“Iowa horsemen have already faced a tripling of the regulatory burden in Iowa— a state where horse racing was well regulated before Congress decided to do a federal takeover,” the comments in response to the 2026 HISA budget say. “Please help stop the bleeding; the Iowa horse industry cannot take much more. The Iowa HBPA respectfully requests that the FTC reject HISA’s $3 million line item for ‘Legal – Lawsuits.’ The general legal budget should be enough for HISA to simply follow DOJ’s lead in these cases.”

*Although we don’t know exactly how much Akin Gump charges per hour, the two attorneys who have been doing most of the work—Pratik Shah and Lide Paterno—have within the last two years publicly listed their rates at $1,500 and $1,180 respectively.