NYRA can hold Baffert disciplinary hearing, judge rules

Bob Baffert’s attempt to stop the New York Racing Association from holding a hearing on whether the embattled trainer should be suspended from racing in the state was thrown out by a federal judge on Wednesday in a hearing first reported on by BloodHorse.

Judge Carol Bagley Amon dismissed the call for a contempt of court ruling, saying her ruling from July, which stopped NYRA from suspending Baffert without due process, did not prohibit the organization from establishing due process to suspend him.

“This isn’t the same proceeding they had before,” Bagley Amon said in the official court transcript. “They have now created rules, which they say, by the way, they don’t just apply to Mr. Baffert.”

Craig Robertson, who represented Baffert in the Brooklyn hearing, argued that contempt should be given as the hearing would seek to enforce the same suspension that was enjoined in July.

“They’ve created the rules and procedures for this hearing that they now want to give him after the fact,” Robertson said. “In other words, those rules and procedures did not exist at the time we were before Your Honor. They have created them subsequent to the injunction hearing, and now they want to retroactively apply them.”

NYRA first suspended Baffert indefinitely in May when the controversy blossomed over Medina Spirit’s positive test for betamethasone after his first-place finish in the Kentucky Derby. Baffert took NYRA to court over that suspension, winning an injunction.

Bagley Amon pointed out the suspension was only enjoined because of the lack of due process in the case.

“I didn’t reach a merits decision as to that, whether they could do that or not do that ultimately,” Bagley Amon said. “What I saw was that (Baffert) was entirely, before someone decided to suspend him, to put forth his answers to all of the charges that they had brought.”

Baffert’s hearing was originally scheduled to begin last Monday, but was delayed until next Monday following the legal action. That is when the parties will meet for a scheduling conference.

“(The July ruling) provided us guidance about how we could establish a due-process mechanism that would allow us to fairly provide the accused to tell their side of the story,” NYRA attorney Henry Greenberg said.

Baffert was suspended by Churchill Downs for two years following the betamethasone positive. His horses will not be allowed to accumulate Kentucky Derby points.

Baffert's colts Corniche and Rockefeller would have earned points from finishing first and fourth, respectively, in Friday's American Pharoah Stakes (G1) at Santa Anita.