The nation’s most conservative appeals court keeps getting beaten up at the Supreme Court, but its judges adamantly refuse to take the hint. On Thursday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared federal horse racing regulations to be unconstitutional, ignoring not one but two pointed signals from SCOTUS that the law is perfectly valid. Its decision arrived just hours after the Supreme Court’s sixth reversal of the 5th Circuit so far this term, with several more likely to come—a humiliating record for the appeals court. This trend shows no sign of stopping: If anything, the 5th Circuit’s MAGA judges seem proud of their reversal rate, eager to dig in and dare the justices to stop them. Now the lower court is forcing SCOTUS to clean up yet another mess of their own making by rescuing an important regulatory scheme that the 5th Circuit remains strangely committed to destroying.

Before diving into the 5th Circuit’s latest misadventure, it’s worth lingering on the sheer scale of its losing streak. The numbers tell the story: Just last term, the justices took up 13 cases from the appeals court, more than from any other, and reversed it in 10 of them. The losses have continued to pile up this term: Once again, the 5th Circuit looks poised to have the highest reversal rate of any appeals court. And that doesn’t even include shadow docket decisions, like SCOTUS’ 7–2 decision last month halting the 5th Circuit’s attempt to block distribution of an abortion medication via telehealth. The pattern is impossible to miss: Republican litigants bring aggressive theories to the appeals court, which MAGA judges promptly embrace; the Supreme Court is then left to decide how much damage it’s willing to undo. For a different appeals court, that record might inspire some humility. On the 5th Circuit, it only seems to inspire more defiance.

Consider Thursday’s decision in National Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association v. Black. The 5th Circuit’s ruling neuters a law that Congress enacted in 2020 to impose nationwide standards on the horse racing industry after the existing state-by-state patchwork failed to prevent equine fatalities and corruption scandals. Rather than saddle an existing agency with additional duties, Congress delegated rulemaking and enforcement power to a private........

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