TLDR
- A federal judge barred Kalshi from offering sports contracts on two California tribes’ lands.
- The order covers sports from baseball and football to chess, esports and UFC.
- The tribes must hand over boundary maps by Nov. 13.
- Kalshi must report its compliance steps within 21 days.
- The ruling follows a Ninth Circuit win for the tribes under federal gaming law.
Kalshi now faces a court order to keep sports event contracts off the lands of two California tribes. U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley granted the preliminary injunction on Nov. 4 in the Northern District of California.
The order turns a voluntary step by Kalshi into a legal requirement. The company had already said it was blocking sports trading on the tribes’ lands, but the tribes argued those blocks did not work well enough.
The case was brought by Blue Lake Rancheria and Chicken Ranch Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians. The injunction applies to Kalshi Inc. and KalshiEX.
What the Court Order Requires
The injunction covers any sports contract that would “facially involve, relate to, or reference” a long list of sports. These include baseball, tennis, pickleball, soccer, basketball, football, golf, chess, esports, hockey, motorsports, boxing, wrestling and Ultimate Fighting Championship events.
The ban applies only to the plaintiff tribes’ lands. It does not stop Kalshi from offering sports contracts across the rest of California.
The order takes effect right away and sets no delayed start date. It also does not tell Kalshi which location-blocking technology it must use.
The tribes must give boundary maps of their lands to Kalshi by Nov. 13. Kalshi must then report the steps it has taken to comply within 21 days of the order.
In an Oct. 14 joint status report, Kalshi said it had worked with GeoComply to block sports trading from the tribes’ lands. The company argued that this made an injunction unnecessary.
The tribes disagreed. They questioned whether the blocks were effective and asked the court for an order that could be enforced.
How the Tribes Won on Appeal
Corley had first denied the tribes’ request for early relief. The tribes appealed, and on Sept. 16 the Ninth Circuit ruled in their favor.
The appeals court found the tribes were likely to win under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, known as IGRA. It sent the case back to Corley to weigh the remaining factors for an injunction.
Kalshi runs a federally regulated derivatives exchange. Its sports contracts pay out if a chosen outcome happens and expire worthless if it does not.
The Ninth Circuit treated these contracts as Class III gaming under IGRA. It held that a customer buying one while physically on tribal land is gaming there, even if Kalshi’s systems are located somewhere else.
Kalshi had argued that the Commodity Exchange Act gives the Commodity Futures Trading Commission exclusive control over its contracts. The panel rejected that view, saying the derivatives law does not block other federal laws that govern gaming on Indian lands.
The California order arrived one day after a separate ruling from the Second Circuit. On Nov. 3, that court denied Kalshi interim protection in its New York and Connecticut appeals, and denied Coinbase Financial Markets the same in its Connecticut appeal.
That Second Circuit order refused to shield the companies from state enforcement. However, it did not order any trading to stop.
Those appeals are still moving forward with no ruling yet on their underlying merits. In California, the tribes now hold a preliminary order that directly limits Kalshi’s sports offerings on their lands, with Kalshi’s compliance report due within 21 days.
