A federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting Kalshi from offering sports-event contracts on the lands of two California tribes, turning an appellate victory into an enforceable geographic restriction.
U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley issued the order on November 4 in favor of Blue Lake Rancheria and Chicken Ranch Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians. The injunction applies to contracts tied to football, basketball, baseball, soccer, tennis and UFC events, and its scope also extends to golf, hockey, boxing, wrestling, motorsports, pickleball, chess and esports.
Under the timetable, the tribes must provide maps identifying their land boundaries by November 13, while Kalshi has 21 days from the order—making the compliance report due by November 25—to explain the steps taken to prevent access from the affected territories.
The dispute began in July 2025, when the tribes sued Kalshi, alleging its sports-event contracts amount to unauthorized Class III gaming under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and violate their gaming ordinances. Kalshi maintained that its products are federally regulated swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act and that the CFTC holds exclusive jurisdiction. In November 2025, Corley initially denied the tribes’ request for a preliminary injunction.
The tribes appealed, and on September 16, 2026, a Ninth Circuit panel partially reversed that decision. The appellate panel concluded the tribes were likely to succeed in showing that Kalshi’s sports contracts violated IGRA and tribal gaming ordinances, and it held that the Commodity Exchange Act’s exclusive-jurisdiction grant did not extend to these sports-event contracts. The panel also found transactions could occur on tribal territory when customers entered contracts from those locations, even though Kalshi’s exchange infrastructure operated elsewhere.
The new order implements that appellate outcome at the district-court level but remains preliminary rather than a final judgment. It names Kalshi Inc. and KalshiEX, and while Robinhood distributes Kalshi event contracts to retail customers and is also a defendant in the broader litigation, the injunction itself focuses on the two Kalshi entities.
The ruling lands amid wider legal pressure on sports-linked prediction markets. On November 4, Arkansas sued Kalshi over alleged illegal online gambling; Utah has filed civil litigation and criminal charges against Kalshi and two executives, although those criminal allegations remain contested; and in October the CFTC sued Utah to defend federal jurisdiction over prediction markets. The competing cases underscore the unresolved question of whether federal derivatives authorization overrides state and tribal gaming restrictions.
For now, the immediate obligations are narrow in geography but could raise compliance costs for prediction-market operators and their distribution partners, as court-enforced location controls become an operational requirement.
