Appeals court clears way for Nevada to temporarily ban prediction market Kalshi

Prediction market provider Kalshi may be hit with a temporary restraining order from the state of Nevada after a federal appeals court declined to block such a motion on Thursday.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board sent Kalshi a cease-and-desist order in March 2025, ordering it to stop offering sports-related prediction market contracts. However, Kalshi said a later temporary restraining order application by Nevada "sought to prohibit Kalshi from offering all its event contracts." Kalshi tried to move the case to federal court, but the case was set to go back to a state court if the appeals court did not grant it an administrative stay.

On Thursday, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel denied Kalshi's motion for an administrative stay in a federal case, clearing the way for the case to get thrown back to a state court.

In its appeal filed on March 13, Kalshi warned that it "faces imminent harm" if the appeals court did not grant its motion, as "the state court proceedings would undermine Kalshi's appellate rights in this appeal" and a related action.

The platform said that it might find itself litigating the same issue — namely, the question of whether state regulators in Nevada have any jurisdiction — in four different venues, including a Nevada state court, Nevada federal court and two different appeals court cases.

"Allowing that to happen would create an untenable risk of subjecting Kalshi to conflicting federal and state court decisions," the filing said. "For example, the state court could enter judgment against Kalshi, finding that the CEA does not preempt state gambling laws, while this Court in Assad [another case] arrives at exactly the opposite conclusion."

Dan Wallach, a gaming lawyer, said in a post on X that a temporary restraining order would push Kalshi out of Nevada entirely for at least two weeks, pending a hearing on a preliminary injunction.

The temporary restraining order could come in the next day or so, he said.

Kalshi and other prediction market providers are facing pushback in over a dozen state actions, with state-level regulators arguing that they have jurisdiction over at least sports-related betting products. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has argued that it has sole jurisdiction over prediction market providers, and filed an amicus brief in one of the federal cases to defend that position.

The CFTC even signed a memorandum of understanding with Major League Baseball, announced at the same time as MLB's announcement it had partnered with Polymarket.