Today, AQHA filed its Notice of Appeal, which will begin the appellate process as the case heads to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans. As previously announced, on August 22, 2013, the judge in the cloning lawsuit issued a final judgment ordering AQHA to immediately begin registering clones and their offspring.
“AQHA strongly believes in the right of our members and directors to make such regulation decisions on their own,” said AQHA Executive Vice President Don Treadway Jr. “We will continue to take any and all necessary legal steps to fight for our members’ rights to determine the rules that govern our Association.”
AQHA will seek a stay of the enforcement of such judgment pending the outcome of the appellate process. If a stay is granted, the registration of clones and their offspring will be put on hold until the appellate process is completed.
Unless and until a stay is granted or AQHA prevails on appeal, the court-mandated rules regarding the registration of clones and their offspring are being incorporated into AQHA’s rules of registration.
The court-mandated rules require new and significant computer programming with respect to AQHA’s data bases. AQHA, in the normal course of business, will develop such programming that is necessary to integrate clones and offspring into such data bases.
In the near future, AQHA will post the court-mandated rules, the new forms to be used to register clones and a summary of the requirements mandated by the court rules to register a cloned horse produced through somatic cell nuclear transfer.
For more information about the cloning lawsuit, view the Cloning Lawsuit Resources pages.
