Wisconsin’s brief in the federal fight over sports event contracts is due Oct. 21
Wisconsin’s consolidated brief is due Wednesday, Oct. 21, in the 7th Circuit, where the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the United States are appealing against the state. On Aug. 24 the court denied their motion to expedite the appeal and consolidated it with separate appeals by KalshiEX and the American Gaming Association. Opening briefs in all three appeals were filed in September, and the appellants’ replies, if any, are due Nov. 12.
The fight is over sports “event contracts.” The CFTC calls them swaps under exclusive federal law; Wisconsin calls them sports betting, illegal under state law. In July, Green Bay-based federal Judge William Griesbach denied the CFTC’s request for a preliminary injunction to stop Wisconsin from enforcing its law against event-contract sites such as Kalshi and CDNA. His 28-page ruling said the agency had failed to show a likelihood of success, in part because it had not shown that such sports bets fall under the definition of swaps. “Wisconsin’s gambling statutes do not conflict with federal commodities regulations and are not preempted by them,” Griesbach wrote.
On Sept. 28, KalshiEX asked to file a second brief, as a friend of the court on the CFTC’s side. Wisconsin opposed through attorney Colin T. Roth, and the court granted the request Oct. 1.
A second sports betting case, Brown County Taxpayers Association v. Evers (2026CV001390), sits in Waukesha County Circuit Court. It challenges 2025 Wisconsin Act 247, which takes an event or sports wager placed from a phone or other electronic device by a person in Wisconsin out of the state’s definition of a bet, if the server sits on a federally recognized tribe’s Indian lands in the state and the wager runs under a tribal gaming compact first entered into before April 1, 1993. Making a bet is otherwise a Class B misdemeanor under Wis. Stat. § 945.02.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty filed the suit on Aug. 5 for two taxpayer groups. Its first claim rests on the state constitution’s ban: “the legislature may not authorize gambling in any form” outside the listed exceptions. Another claim, under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection guarantee, targets what it calls a benefit for tribal members not available to non-members. The complaint asks the court to declare the act unconstitutional and to bar Gov. Tony Evers and three other state officials from authorizing or administering mobile sports betting, including by negotiating compact amendments.
https://racinecountyeye.com/2026/10/23/wisconsin-sports-betting-contracts/