Kalshi has been ordered to stop offering sports, election and entertainment event contracts in Nevada after the First Judicial District Court in Carson City granted the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) on March 20th.
The order runs for 14 days and sets an April 3rd hearing on whether the court should impose longer-term injunctive relief.
Nevada regulators said Kalshi had been offering event-based contracts in the state without a Nevada gaming licence and outside the state’s gambling framework. In a statement issued after the ruling, NGCB Chair, Mike Dreitzer, said Kalshi’s claim that it operates legally in all 50 states was “clearly not true”, adding that prediction markets are illegal in Nevada where they facilitate unlicensed gambling.
The Board added that the ruling means it has now restricted all known unlicensed prediction markets operating in the state.
Judge Jason D. Woodbury said Nevada had shown sufficient grounds for emergency relief, finding at this stage that federal commodities law does not pre-empt Nevada gaming law and that the Board faces immediate and irreparable harm if Kalshi continues to operate outside the state’s licensing, age-control and integrity regime.
The TRO also bars Kalshi from allowing its market to accept wagers on those events from people under 21 in Nevada.
The decision marks another setback for Kalshi as US states intensify scrutiny of prediction markets. Kalshi argues that its event contracts fall under the jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) rather than state gambling law, but Nevada’s court rejected that position for now.
The ruling came days after Arizona filed criminal charges against the company, escalating the wider battle over whether sports event contracts should be treated as financial products or unlicensed betting.
