At a glance

  • The National Football League filed an NFL amicus brief on 8 Oct supporting New Jersey gaming regulators, who are asking the US Supreme Court to review a ruling that let Kalshi offer sports event contracts in the state.
  • The court has not decided whether to hear the case, Flaherty v. KalshiEX (No. 26-299). Kalshi’s response to the petition is due on 9 Nov.

The league argues that sports prediction contracts are effectively gambling, not swaps that only the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) may regulate, CNBC reported. The brief is on the court’s docket.

A petition for certiorari asks the Supreme Court to take up a case. An amicus (“friend of the court”) brief at this stage argues that the question matters enough to be heard.

What the NFL amicus brief argues

“It is well established, however, that regulating gambling is among states’ sovereign police powers,” the brief states, according to CNBC.

The league says football accounted for $1.8 billion of prediction-market trading on the first Sunday of the season, more than half of total volume. It points to contracts it considers open to manipulation, such as a missed field goal, and to bets on injuries or officiating that insiders could know about in advance.

It also wants a minimum age of 21, as most states require for sports betting. Kalshi accepts customers from 18, CNBC reported.

The league told CNBC it believes that “given the current resource constraints of the CFTC, this is a job better left to the states”.

What Kalshi says

Kalshi spokesperson Elisabeth Diana told CNBC that the CFTC’s ongoing rulemaking on prediction markets would address many of the NFL’s concerns. She said the company had tried to work with the league on market integrity “with no response”. CNBC discloses a commercial relationship with Kalshi.

Related: The CFTC’s open crypto rulemaking

How the case got here

On 6 Apr, the Third Circuit upheld a preliminary injunction for Kalshi. It found that the Commodity Exchange Act likely pre-empts New Jersey’s gambling laws for contracts traded on a CFTC-licensed exchange. The ruling is preliminary, Holland & Knight noted, and the case continues in district court. Other appeals courts have reached different results, according to CNBC.

The NFL is not alone. The docket lists briefs this week from Ohio with 38 other states and the District of Columbia, 145 Indian tribes and tribal organisations, former CFTC chairman Gary Gensler and former senator Christopher Dodd, among others.

What happens next

  • 9 Nov 2026: Kalshi’s response to the petition is due, after an extension from 8 Oct.
  • After that: the justices decide at a private conference whether to grant review. No date has been set.

Produced by the Crypto Watch Desk newsroom using AI tools. This article is for information only and is not investment advice.