Every ruling and state action against Kalshi, in date order

Eleven competitor pages on this subject were audited for the research behind this site. Not one carried a changelog or a per-fact verification stamp. Two of them go stale on a date they printed themselves. This page is the answer to that: the whole fight in date order, each row saying how we know.

If you are citing any of this, cite the underlying document rather than us. They are all linked in the sources.

What the record shows

Read end to end, the striking thing is that the same question has been answered both ways by federal courts within four months. In April the Third Circuit held sports event contracts are swaps and the CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction. In August a federal judge in Connecticut held they are not swaps at all. Both were reading the same statutory definition.

The second striking thing is that the federal government is not a bystander. The CFTC has brought its own actions against states, and in Michigan it ordered an exchange to honour trades a state court had ordered unwound. Any account of this as platform-against-state is missing half of it.

The third is the newest and least covered. Kalshi is no longer the only operator litigating. Between 4 and 14 August 2026, Ludlow Exchange LLC, trading as Novig, sued the attorneys general of New York, Washington, New Mexico, Massachusetts and Wisconsin in five federal district courts. Two of those attorneys general, Torrez and Campbell, are signatories on the brief supporting Massachusetts. Whatever the courts decide, this has stopped being one company's fight.

The record

How to read the evidence column

• PRIMARY, 10 rows. We downloaded and read the document. The Third

Circuit opinion, the amici brief, the CFTC releases and four attorney general announcements are in this tier.

• DOCKET, 9 rows. We read the court's own docket record, through the

CourtListener search API on 20 August 2026, and did not read the filings. So the caption, court, number and filing date are from the court; what the documents say is not represented here at all.

• QUOTED, 6 rows. We read reporting that quotes the document at length,

such as the Connecticut order. The words are the court's; the selection is the outlet's.

• REPORTED, 9 rows. We read that something happened and never saw the

document. Dates in this tier could be off, and case details are absent rather than guessed.

A page that gives you fifty facts at one confidence level is telling you less than a page that gives you twenty-five at three levels.

What is deliberately not here

• Anything after 20 August 2026. This is a live fight. The Ninth Circuit had

not ruled on Arizona when this was written and the Massachusetts SJC had not decided SJC-13906.

• Docket numbers we did not retrieve. Most rows have none, because we did

not pull the dockets. Where we have a case number, it came off a document.

• Geofencing and promo eligibility. Neither is a legal fact and both change

without notice. The state legality hub explains why running those together with legality is the error that makes competitor pages contradict each other.

• Predictions. We are not lawyers and there is nothing here about how any of

it should come out.

Questions people actually type

Is Kalshi legal in the US right now? There is no single answer, and the table above is why. A federal appeals court ruled for Kalshi against New Jersey in April 2026, and a federal district judge ruled against it in Connecticut in August 2026. Thirty-seven attorneys general plus DC are arguing the state side in the Massachusetts case, which was undecided when this page was written.

Which states have taken action against Kalshi? By our count from the record above, at least fourteen have a documented court filing, order or cease-and-desist, and the CFTC has itself sued nine states. Per-state detail is on the state legality hub, which lists every one we have a document for.

Has Kalshi ever lost? Yes, more than once. It lost a preliminary injunction in Maryland in August 2025, lost its challenge to the New York Gaming Commission in July 2026, and was denied an injunction in Connecticut in August 2026. It has also won: Tennessee in February 2026 and the Third Circuit in April 2026.

What did the Third Circuit actually decide? That the Commodity Exchange Act preempts state laws directly interfering with swaps traded on designated contract markets, and that sports event contracts are such swaps, so the CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction. It affirmed a preliminary injunction. Full detail on New Jersey.

Why do two federal courts disagree? They read the statutory definition of a swap differently. Connecticut held that an event either occurs or does not, and who wins is a result rather than an occurrence. The Third Circuit held the contracts depend on outcomes associated with economic consequences and so fit. That is the whole split in two sentences.

When was this last checked? 20 August 2026, and every source above carries its own read date. If you are reading this much later, treat every row as a starting point.