In the Nevada Supreme Court, Kalshi lost an effort a few days ago to stop a requirement to block his clients in the state from much of the platform’s business activity. The denial signed by three state judges on Wednesday said they were “not persuaded” by the company’s emergency motion, and Kalshi could also face legal problems for failing to geofence his business before a court-imposed deadline.
In Ohio, Kalshi sued the gaming regulator on Monday, following earlier parallel court arguments from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, seeking to stop Ohio’s sanction against the company over allegations that it has run an unlicensed sports betting operation.
The next day, a local court in Michigan granted that state’s gaming regulators a two-week temporary restraining order against Kalshi to prevent him from offering, advertising or facilitating sports betting there.
“Kalshi is targeting Michigan’s most vulnerable residents with sports betting disguised as an investment, and without intervention, the harm will only continue to get worse,” Michigan Gaming Control Board Executive Director Henry Williams said in a statement Tuesday.
On the positive side for prediction platforms: The CFTC and its pro-innovation chairman, Mike Selig, are aggressively trying to argue that Kalshi and the others fall within the agency’s exclusive jurisdiction as the U.S. derivatives regulator, arguing in their own lawsuits against several states that the contracts sold in prediction markets are effectively the same as those an agricultural company might buy to protect itself against future changes in crop prices.
