Michigan judge orders Kalshi to halt sports contracts in state
Judge Rosemarie Aquilina issued a 14-day temporary restraining order requiring prediction market platform Kalshi to halt sports event contracts in Michigan, citing potential harm to young users. The CFTC-registered platform must geofence Michigan users while fighting the state legal battle. WILX, a Lansing-Jackson NBC affiliate, was first to report the development.
Kalshi must now geofence Michigan entirely while absorbing a second judicial order within 24 hours from the same state, stripping away the operational buffer its CFTC registration once provided. The dual injunctions - first sports contracts, now all operations - multiply immediate compliance costs and legal exposure, leaving no portion of Michigan revenue intact. Attorney General Dana Nessel can point to successive court wins to seek permanent injunctive relief, while Illinois, Minnesota, Kentucky and other states with pending enforcement cite Michigan's success to resist federal preemption claims. Kalshi's legal budget and product roadmap must stretch across simultaneous state fights without the unified federal defense it had assumed. Platforms without comparable litigation capacity face steep odds against this emerging patchwork of state bans.
Michigan judge Rosemarie Aquilina's order adds to ongoing state-level Kalshi enforcement actions, alongside parallel proceedings in Massachusetts and Kentucky that are testing whether CFTC registration blocks state gambling law.