Ohio bill would bar politicians and staff from Kalshi and Polymarket trading
An Ohio bill introduced Tuesday, April 7, 2026 would bar politicians and government staff from trading on Kalshi and Polymarket, the two best-known U.S. prediction market platforms. The legislation, reported by States Newsroom's Ohio Capital Journal, arrives as both platforms have reported sharp increases in suspicious trading activity and caught suspected insider traders in recent months. Congressional scrutiny has intensified in parallel: the Senate Commerce Committee is examining insider trading risks and gambling addiction tied to platforms like Kalshi, Semafor contends the platforms face a massive insider-trading problem or the appearance of one, and KUOW found the legal question of whether members of Congress illegally use non-public information on Polymarket is more complex than it appears. India has separately begun enforcing a new gaming law targeting Kalshi and Polymarket.
Kalshi and Polymarket must now build or expand congressional-account exclusion systems to satisfy three separate state-level restrictions in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Minnesota within a single week. Any platform that delays compliance risks becoming the test case for enforcement templates now spreading across state legislatures.
Becomes the third U.S. jurisdiction this week to impose prediction-market trading restrictions on government officials, after Wisconsin's insider-trading ban and Minnesota's legislative push, as state-level action accelerates ahead of pending House votes on the Senate's congressional account-exclusion bill.