Kalshi and Polymarket lose bids to halt Nevada and Washington gambling cases
Kalshi and Polymarket on May 23 lost procedural bids to halt gambling cases brought by Nevada and Washington state regulators, with three-judge panels denying the platforms' appeals in both states. Nevada regulators assert that sports-related event contracts are functionally identical to sports betting and therefore fall under state gambling law, not federal commodity regulation. Kalshi maintains its contracts are federally-regulated financial derivatives that only the Commodity Futures Trading Commission can oversee. The active cases deepen a jurisdictional split between state gambling authorities and federal regulators, even as CFTC filed its own suits against multiple states — reportedly drawing White House anger — to block state-level crackdowns on the two platforms.
The active Nevada and Washington cases now expose both platforms to gambling-classification rulings while they remain in court. Any state-level loss would arm regulators in Rhode Island, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minnesota with binding precedent to block operations or force geofencing.
Joins Rhode Island, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minnesota as the sixth state-level regulatory front Kalshi and Polymarket now face, with the CFTC's amicus and direct suits still unable to freeze those proceedings.