Texas has not decided. It has not enforced, and it did not sign

Texas has brought no enforcement action against Kalshi, and Attorney General Ken Paxton's office did not join either multistate brief against it. That is not a finding that trading is lawful in Texas. It is the absence of a finding, which is a different thing, and most pages ranking for this question quietly convert one into the other.

What Texas does have is a gambling statute that on its face covers both sports and election betting, and a Lieutenant Governor who has told a Senate committee to work out how federal law is being used to get around it.

Three questions get answered as though they were one

Most state lists you will find are answering a different question from the one in their headline. The three that get run together:

1. Is it lawful for me to trade here? State law.
2. Will the platform let me in? Geofencing, which the platform sets and can change without notice.
3. Am I eligible for the sign-up promo? A marketing offer.

The state legality hub sets out which attorneys general have taken a position on the record, across all fifty-one jurisdictions, and Kalshi legality by state indexes every state with a court record in one line each.

What follows, and where it comes from

Texas did not sign either multistate brief. The rest of this page is Texas specific. Where a claim rests on reporting rather than on a document we read ourselves, it says so at that point rather than in a footnote.

What Texas law actually says

Tex. Penal Code section 47.02(a) makes it an offence if a person “makes a bet on the partial or final result of a game or contest or on the performance of a participant in a game or contest”, or “makes a bet on the result of any political nomination, appointment, or election or on the degree of success of any nominee, appointee, or candidate”. Those two clauses describe, in order, the sports contracts and the election contracts that prediction markets list. An offence under the section is a Class C misdemeanour.

The private-place defence has three parts, and they are cumulative

Section 47.02(b) provides a defence where the actor gambled in a private place, and no person received any economic benefit other than personal winnings, and the risks and chances were the same for all participants except for skill or luck. All three have to hold. An exchange that takes a fee on the trade is difficult to fit through the second one, whoever is trading and wherever they sit.

Texas has been asked to join twice, and did not answer

This is the part no other page carries. According to Texas Tribune reporting we read, the National Association of Attorneys General and the Ohio attorney general's office asked Texas in March 2026 to join a brief arguing the CFTC does not have sole authority over these markets. Thirty-nine states signed. Paxton's office did not respond. The same two organisations asked again for the 37-state brief, and again there was no response. In August 2025 Paxton was one of four attorneys general who did not sign a letter urging the then US Attorney General to act on offshore gambling. Asked whether Texas gambling law applies to prediction markets, Paxton's office did not comment, and declined to release internal communications on attorney-client privilege grounds.

The legislature is studying it, and cannot act until 2027

In March 2026 Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick directed the Senate State Affairs Committee to study how federal law has been used to “circumvent Texas gambling prohibitions”, and to prepare recommendations for the 2027 session on protecting the integrity of elections and sports. Texas holds no regular legislative session in 2026. At the time of the reporting we read, the committee had no meetings scheduled.

What currently answers this question for Texans

Worth knowing what you are reading against. As at 20 August 2026 the top ranking result in the United States for this question is a Reddit thread in r/IsItIllegal. Ahrefs scores the keyword at Keyword Difficulty 0 and describes it as needing very few referring domains to reach the top ten. Volume is 1,100 a month in the US and the cost per click is $30.00, the highest in our research, while the Traffic Potential of the winning page is 70. Most people asking this question do not click anything, and the ones who do are worth a great deal to advertisers. A forum thread is currently the best answer available.

Why the federal question matters more in Texas than elsewhere

Where other states acted and were met in federal court, Texas has not acted at all, so there is no Texas case. The CFTC has sued to block several states from enforcing their gambling laws against these markets. Its chair has described the arrangement as the exchanges being the first line of defence with the Commission as the second. Whatever Texas decides in 2027 lands into that argument rather than ahead of it.

The provisions in play

Section numbers are given so you can look them up. Where we have not read the provision directly, the sources list says so.

What we could not verify

• Whether section 47.02 applies to an exchange-traded event contract. No Texas court has said, no Texas enforcement action has tested it, and the attorney general declined to answer the question when asked. We are quoting the statute, not predicting how it would be read.
• Whether Kalshi or Polymarket geofence Texas today. Untested here.
• What the State Affairs Committee will recommend. The charge is public; the recommendations do not exist yet.
• Paxton's reasons for not joining either brief. The reporting establishes that Texas was asked and did not respond. It does not establish why.

Questions people actually type

Is Kalshi legal in Texas? There is no yes or no here that would be honest. This page sets out what Texas has actually done, what its law says, and what a court has or has not decided, so you can see the state of play rather than a verdict nobody has issued.

Has Texas taken action against Kalshi? The section above answers this for Texas specifically. Across the country, reporting we read describes fifteen states having sued, investigated or sent cease-and-desist orders over gambling licensure. The states differ, and a page that gives one national answer is flattening that.

Does the CFTC designation settle it? No. Kalshi is a CFTC-designated contract market and nobody disputes that. Whether the designation displaces state gaming law is the contested question, argued through 7 U.S.C. section 2(e) and the clear-statement rule in Whitman, 531 U.S. 457, 468 (2001). Two federal district courts have answered it differently.

Can I be prosecuted for trading in Texas? We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. The filings we read are about whether the exchange may offer the contracts, not about individual traders. If that is your real question it is one for someone licensed to answer it in Texas.

Is the app blocked in Texas? We have not tested it. Geofencing is a platform setting that changes without notice and is a different question from legality.

How many states are arguing this? Thirty-seven states plus the District of Columbia signed the brief, which is 38 jurisdictions, and Massachusetts is separately the party bringing the case. The full signature block is on the state legality hub.

What this page is not

It is not legal advice and we are not lawyers. It is a reading of public documents and reporting, all linked, so you can check it yourself.