U.S. appeals court denies Kalshi rehearing petition in Nevada sports-contract case
A U.S. appeals court denied Kalshi's petition for rehearing in a Nevada case on November 4, refusing to revisit its earlier ruling on the platform's sports-event contracts. The denial leaves intact an adverse appellate decision as Kalshi fights multiple legal fronts. Public comments on proposed CFTC rulemaking for event contracts, including sports-event contracts on prediction markets, remain due by November 18. The ruling comes as CoinDesk reports a new lawsuit has been filed against Kalshi, adding to the stack of active legal challenges facing the CFTC-registered platform.
The rehearing denial locks in a circuit-level loss that Kalshi cannot unwind without Supreme Court intervention. That matters because a former CFTC counsel has already flagged the circuit split as a likely vehicle for cert, and this closed door pushes Kalshi toward that costly, uncertain path. Meanwhile, state attorneys general in Utah, Ohio, Tennessee, and Louisiana are copying each other's wins against the platform, treating every federal setback as fresh leverage.
The November 18 comment deadline on the CFTC's swap-rule proposal now sits on a collision course with state courts that move faster than federal rulemaking. Kalshi must budget for three simultaneous fights: defending state suits, lobbying the swap rule, and possibly petitioning the Supreme Court. Each additional circuit loss emboldens the next state filing.
Joins a pattern of federal setbacks and state felony charges that now includes Utah's $61.2 million civil suit, co-founder criminal exposure, and CFTC-DOJ preemption litigation alongside the swap-rule proposal CFTC proposes twin rules classifying event contracts as swaps while excluding casino gambling.