NFL Joins 39 States, Global Regulators in Pushing Supreme Court on Kalshi Case

A Wave of Briefs Fly In Before Kalshi’s Response

Gaming regulators, sports leagues, and states are lining up behind New Jersey at the U.S. Supreme Court. In Flaherty v. KalshiEX, the International Association of Gaming Regulators (IAGR), which represents regulators “worldwide,” and the North American Gaming Regulators Association (NAGRA) filed a joint brief on Oct. 2. Ohio, along with 38 other states and the District of Columbia, followed on Oct. 7, and the NFL filed on Oct. 8.

All of the briefs ask the justices to decide whether federal commodities law shields sports event contracts on CFTC-registered exchanges from state gambling laws. The Third Circuit sided with Kalshi in New Jersey in April, while the Ninth and Sixth Circuits ruled against the company. Its response to the petition is due Nov. 9.

“The same product, offered by the same company under the same federal registration, is presently shielded from state regulatory authority within the Third Circuit and subject to it within the Sixth and Ninth,” the regulators wrote. NAGRA’s members include tribal and Canadian provincial regulators, and the brief leans on a September Ninth Circuit ruling for California tribes: “Kalshi may reshuffle the cards, but it cannot change the hand: Its sports event contracts are class III gaming.”

The states’ brief, led by Ohio, calls federal and state courts “hopelessly confused and divided,” and says prediction markets “cannot strip the states of their core sovereign power through relabeling and window-dressing.” Its signers include Alabama, California, Michigan, Nevada, New York, and Pennsylvania. Texas and Florida did not sign. The brief also counts nine states the CFTC itself has sued to block enforcement.

The NFL’s brief, whose counsel includes former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, says $1.8 billion of the $3.3 billion traded on prediction markets on the season’s first Sunday was tied to NFL games. The American football league says the CFTC and exchanges such as Kalshi have declined its requests to ban bets “easily manipulable by a single person” and to set a minimum age of 21, leaving 18-year-olds able to trade. It asks the court to act “before another NFL season goes by.”

The lower courts are not unanimous: a federal judge in Chicago granted Kalshi a partial win over Illinois on Oct. 2, the same day the regulators filed.

The case also turns on the words of a former lawmaker who is now paid by Kalshi. New Jersey’s petition cites 2010 Senate remarks by then-Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and the Third Circuit dissent quotes her warning that “it would be quite easy to construct an ‘event contract’ around sporting events such as the Super Bowl,” contracts that “would be used solely for gambling.”

Lincoln Policy Group, which lists Lincoln as a lobbyist, has reported $480,000 in lobbying income from Kalshi since 2024, according to federal lobbying disclosures. She also joined other former lawmakers in a brief supporting Kalshi at the Third Circuit.

On Polymarket, the chance that the court accepts a sports event contract case by Oct. 31 stood at 3% on Thursday, and 28% by Dec. 31, though only about $24,000 has traded on the year-end contract. Kalshi’s Supreme Court strategy has leaned on a pending CFTC rewrite of its gaming rules.

Kalshi’s public data shows its 15-minute gold markets traded more contracts than their ether counterparts in September, their second month…