Arizona governor and secretary of state ban state workers from prediction market insider trading
Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs signed an executive order on Thursday, July 9, 2026, banning state executive branch employees from using nonpublic government information to trade on prediction markets. The order prohibits both disclosing and using such information for profit on platforms including Kalshi and Polymarket. Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes separately barred staff from using insider information on prediction markets days later. Hobbs encouraged other state agencies to adopt similar restrictions.
The state-level ban adds Arizona to the patchwork of jurisdictions fencing public employees out of event contracts. For CFTC-registered platforms, each new government-employee restriction narrows the user base that drives liquidity on election and policy markets. Kalshi and Polymarket now face overlapping rules from federal agencies, individual states, and local counties without a unified standard to streamline compliance.
The twin Arizona executive actions show governors and secretaries of state acting in parallel, suggesting the playbook is spreading faster than federal rulemaking. For traders, government-contract markets carry growing reputational risk as insider-trading narratives harden into policy. The platforms must now build geofencing and identity screening for public employees that varies by jurisdiction.
Joins a broader crackdown on public-employee prediction market access that now spans federal, state, and county levels, including Maricopa County's ban and the White House's suspension of a Trump staffer over Kalshi trades.