A hearing to consider an appeal of the 90-day suspension given to trainer Bob Baffert by the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission has been pushed back to June 28, Baffert’s attorney said Monday. The hearing, which will take place in front of a hearing officer appointed by the racing commission, was scheduled to begin April 18. Baffert’s attorney, however, said Monday that the hearing is now scheduled to begin June 28. Attorneys frequently seek delays in the scheduling of hearings to prepare their cases. Adjudications of hearings in front of the racing commission typically take four to six months to complete. The commission can either accept or reject the hearing officer’s recommendations. Baffert began serving the 90-day suspension on April 4, and it is scheduled to end July 2. The suspension was initially scheduled to start March 8, but a series of efforts by Baffert’s attorneys to get the suspension stayed while he appealed the decision delayed the start until the April date. Baffert has already transferred his horses to two other trainers based in Southern California. He is separately pursuing an appeal of the penalty in Kentucky state court. The penalty was issued after Baffert’s Medina Spirit tested positive for the regulated corticosteroid betamethasone after winning last year’s Kentucky Derby. Medina Spirit was disqualified from the race as part of the penalty. The horse’s owner, Amr Zedan, is appealing the disqualification. The stewards’ ruling based the length of the suspension, in part, on the fact that another Baffert horse, Gamine, tested positive for the same medication after finishing third in the 2020 Kentucky Oaks, which was held in September of that year, rather than its traditional spring date. Baffert did not appeal that ruling, in which Gamine was disqualified and Baffert was fined. No suspension was issued. Baffert and his lawyers have contended that Medina Spirit tested positive for betamethasone due to the daily use of a cream containing the drug to treat a skin condition, rather than because of a joint injection of the drug, the usual route of administration. They have argued that Kentucky’s prohibition on the race-day presence of the drug should not apply to Medina Spirit. The KHRC has pushed back on that argument, saying that the state’s rules apply to a post-race positive regardless of the route of administration. A judge who heard Baffert’s argument for a stay of the suspension wrote in ruling denying the motion that Baffert and his attorneys “have failed to demonstrate a likelihood of success” of winning their appeal.