NFL, 39 State AGs, and Cabazon Tribe Urge SCOTUS to Hear Kalshi Case as Kalshi Delays Response to November 9
October 8 was the amicus brief deadline in New Jersey's Supreme Court petition (Flaherty v. KalshiEX), and it produced a wave of filings urging the Court to take the case. The NFL filed a brief arguing sports event contracts are gambling, not swaps. Ohio led 39 state attorneys general and DC; the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians — the tribe whose 1987 Supreme Court case established the framework for modern tribal gaming — also filed. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court granted Kalshi a 30-day extension to file its response, moving the deadline from October 8 to November 9 and pushing any cert decision toward December or early 2027.
October 8, 2026 was the deadline for amicus curiae briefs in New Jersey's petition for certiorari, docketed at the Supreme Court as Flaherty v. KalshiEX, LLC, and it produced a coordinated wave of filings urging the Court to grant review. The most prominent came from the National Football League, which argued that Kalshi's sports event contracts are gambling products subject to state regulation, not financial swaps under the exclusive jurisdiction of the CFTC. The NFL's brief was joined by a parallel filing from 39 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia, led by Ohio, and by a brief from the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians — the tribe whose 1987 Supreme Court victory in California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians established the legal framework that led Congress to pass the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988. The International Association of Gaming Regulators and the North American Gaming Regulators Association had filed in support of review days earlier. The breadth of the coalition — a major professional sports league, a near-supermajority of state AGs, tribal gaming interests, and the gambling regulatory community — is an unusually strong signal to the Court that the question warrants resolution.
The NFL's legal argument goes to the heart of the swap-definition question. The league argued that a swap, in its traditional and statutory sense, is an instrument used to hedge a preexisting financial risk, whereas a sports event contract exposes the purchaser to the outcome of an event in which the purchaser has no underlying financial interest. On this view, a farmer hedging crop prices or an airline hedging fuel costs is using a swap to offset a risk they already bear; a person buying a contract on whether a team covers the spread is not hedging anything, but taking on a new risk for its own sake, which is the definition of a wager. This is the same statutory argument that the Ninth and Sixth Circuits accepted in ruling against Kalshi, and it is the argument New Jersey will press on the merits if cert is granted. The NFL framed its position carefully: it said it is not opposed to prediction markets as such, but believes that given the CFTC's resource constraints, regulation is better left to the states, and it expressed specific concern about contracts vulnerable to manipulation and about bets tied to injuries, officiating, and other information that insiders could know in advance.
The NFL's participation is significant beyond its legal argument because of the league's commercial stake. The NFL cited the scale of football-linked prediction market activity: $1.8 billion traded on contracts tied to football on the first Sunday of the NFL season, more than half of total platform volume that day. Football is the single largest driver of prediction market sports volume, which means the NFL is the league with the most to gain or lose from how these contracts are regulated. Its decision to side with the states — rather than partner commercially with the platforms, as several other leagues have done — positions the NFL as the most powerful private opponent of the prediction market industry's current regulatory model. A professional sports league telling the Supreme Court that contracts on its own games are gambling is a potent counter to the platforms' argument that these are legitimate financial instruments.
While the pro-cert amicus briefs accumulated, the Supreme Court granted Kalshi a 30-day extension to file its response to New Jersey's petition, moving the deadline from October 8 to November 9. The extension, granted without comment, is routine — respondents frequently seek additional time to prepare opposition briefs — but it has a concrete effect on the timeline. With Kalshi's response now due November 9, New Jersey will have its brief-in-reply window after that, and the Court would not conference the petition until all papers are in, likely in late November or December. A cert decision in the prediction market case is therefore now most likely in December 2026 or early 2027, rather than the October-November window that earlier appeared possible. For a sector whose $40 billion valuations and IPO timelines are partly contingent on legal resolution, the extension pushes the moment of clarity further into the future, extending the period in which the platforms operate under unresolved circuit-split uncertainty across more than ten states.
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Recent updates
Google Adds Prediction Market Ad Policy — CFTC License Required, Ads Blocked in Five States
Google published a dedicated prediction markets section in its advertising policy on October 15, requiring domestic prediction market operators to hold a CFTC Designated Contract Market license to run ads — a requirement that favors Kalshi and Polymarket US over unlicensed rivals. Google also bars prediction market ads targeting five states where enforcement is most active: Connecticut (added recently), Michigan and New York (July), Ohio (June), and Nevada (earlier in the year). The policy makes Google's advertising platform mirror the state-by-state enforcement map, using commercial access as a de facto regulatory layer.
Kalshi Partners With Signify to Police Athlete Harassment, Codifies Anti-Abuse Rule
Kalshi announced a partnership with Signify Group on October 15 to monitor social media for abuse and threats directed at athletes, coaches, and sports personnel across the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and ATP Tour. Kalshi notified the CFTC of a new rule, dated October 13, that codifies athlete harassment as an 'impermissible activity' on its platform, with sanctions up to financial penalties and permanent account closure. The move follows a September appeal by five major leagues and their players' unions for lifetime bans on abusive bettors, and positions Kalshi ahead of the integrity concerns that sports leagues and regulators have raised about prediction market sports contracts.
CFTC Moves to Classify Event Contracts as Swaps — Attempting to Settle the Core SCOTUS Question by Rule
The CFTC, led by Chairman Michael Selig, moved on October 9 to explicitly classify event contracts as swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act, which would place prediction market contracts squarely under federal swap regulation. The scope covers sports, political, cultural, and weather contracts, while a separate provision excludes casino-style gambling and sportsbook wagers. Selig said the aim is to remove 'any ambiguity' about these contracts. The action targets the exact question dividing the federal circuits and now before the Supreme Court — whether event contracts are 'swaps' — and represents an attempt by the federal regulator to settle that question by rule while the courts remain split.