by John Eden
On April 16, 2026, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments in KalshiEX LLC v. Assad, a consolidated appeal that will produce the first circuit-level ruling on whether federal derivatives law, administered by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC” or “Commission”), preempts state gambling regulation of sports event contracts. The outcome will affect not only Kalshi, the CFTC-regulated prediction market at the center of the litigation, but the entire architecture of sports gambling regulation in the United States.
