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To add one more thing, just because I'm really kind of annoyed at a condescending post telling me I don't know anything about federal constitutional practice, no, the entry form is not a "contract" with the KHRC. It might very well be a contract with Churchill Downs, but that fact and $18 might get you a mint julep.
The determination that Maximum Security was disqualified was made by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission. Not Churchill Downs. And not, actually, even the stewards, because the stewards' ruling was appealed (as is required, as you almost always must exhaust your administrative remedies before heading to court), and the KHRC ruled against the Wests.
So the question isn't whether the Wests had a contract with Churchill (they did, but that contract was honored when Churchill permitted the horse to start and awarded the purse money pursuant to the placings ordered by the stewards and, in this case, the KHRC). The question is whether the Wests had a contract with KHRC. And they do not. The only thing they hold from the KHRC is an owners' license, and that's simply a regulatory order that permits them to race horses in the state. It's not any sort of contract.
As a result there is no ground for filing a breach of contract action here.
I should add something else-- you generally can't obtain specific performance as a remedy for breach of contract anyway. So just like the proposed Section 1983/Due Process claim, the only remedy that a contract suit could get you is the purse money anyway.
That remedy point is basically the way that parties are forced to make most of their challenges to administrative rulings in state courts.
State courts have a specific power, called a writ of mandamus, where they can mandate-- i.e., direct-- an administrative agency to issue a particular order. Federal courts, in contrast, do not issue mandatory injunctions except in extraordinary circumstances. The sort of injunction we normally think about in a court case is a PROHIBITORY injunction, which says to a state agency "you must not do something". Such as "you must not enforce this unconstitutional statute".
But what a state court, and only a state court, can do, is mandate that a state administrative agency take a particular action, such as "declare Maximum Security the winner of the Kentucky Derby".
This requirement has real bite. I have been forced on occasion to bring claims challenging administrative actions in state court, even when I preferred to be in federal court, because only a state court could offer the direct remedy of a court order requiring the agency to do something specific.
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