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Published: May 5, 2026

Massachusetts top court appears open to state ban on Kalshi sports betting

Prediction-markets operator Kalshi on Monday faced a skeptical slate of justices on Massachusetts' highest court, ​which appeared poised to uphold regulators' authority to ban it from offering sports-events contracts in the state.

A lawyer for ‌Kalshi told the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that only the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission can regulate its business, and asked the panel to overturn an injunction that would bar it from allowing users to place financial bets on football, baseball and other sporting events without a gaming license.

"This is fundamentally a federal regulatory issue," said Grant ​Mainland, Kalshi's lawyer.

But a majority of the seven-justice court repeatedly questioned Mainland about how Kalshi's offerings differed from traditional sportsbooks that would be ​subject to state policing powers.

"In what way do they differentiate from what would colloquially be known as a bet," Justice ⁠Gabrielle Wolohojian asked.

The arguments came in one of the major battlefronts in a nationwide legal fight over the ability of state gaming regulators ​to police the activity of the multi-billion dollar prediction market industry, which has exploded in growth.

Kalshi and companies like it allow users to place ​trades and profit from predictions on events such as sports and elections. States argue that firms like Kalshi are operating without required state licenses in violation of gaming laws, including bans on wagers by those under 21.

Massachusetts' Democratic Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell had sued Kalshi in September, and convinced a trial court judge ​in February to issue a preliminary injunction that would bar the New York-based company from continuing to offer sports events contracts in the state.

​The injunction has been on hold pending Kalshi's appeal. Should it take effect, Massachusetts would become the second state to implement a court-ordered ban on Kalshi offering ‌events contracts, ⁠following Nevada. Mainland argued that the state has no role to play in regulating Kalshi, a CFTC-registered designated contract market whose sports-events contracts qualify as "swaps," a type of derivative contract that the CFTC gained the exclusive ability to oversee when Congress enacted the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010.

He noted that the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with its position on the CFTC's authority in April, preventing New Jersey gaming regulators from pursuing an enforcement ​action against Kalshi. The CFTC filed ​an amicus brief supporting Kalshi's appeal ⁠in Massachusetts as well.