Sixth Circuit rules against Kalshi in Ohio and Tennessee, deepening the split over sports contracts

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled on September 25, 2026 against the prediction market Kalshi in two appeals, one from Ohio and one from Tennessee. According to trade coverage, the panel's opinion was written by Senior Circuit Judge Julia Smith Gibbons and joined by Judges Eric Clay and Rachel Bloomekatz, and the decision was unanimous. The court affirmed the denial of a preliminary injunction in the Ohio case and vacated the preliminary injunction Kalshi had won in the Tennessee case, which clears both states to enforce their gambling laws against Kalshi's sports contracts while the litigation continues.

What the court held

Reporting on the opinion describes two holdings. First, the panel concluded that Kalshi's sports-event contracts do not qualify as swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act. The statute defines a swap to include contracts tied to an event associated with a potential financial, economic or commercial consequence. The court reportedly read that phrase to reach events inherently tied to a financial consequence, such as an interest rate move or a debt default, and found the downstream effects of a game on sponsors, advertisers and local businesses too attenuated, indirect and speculative to count. Second, the court reportedly held that even if the contracts were swaps, federal commodities law would not displace the two states' gambling rules.

We could not reach the opinion itself during this pass, so the description above rests on several trade and news outlets that agree with each other on the date, the panel, the outcome in each state and the two holdings. We have not quoted the opinion, and its exact wording may differ from the summaries.

Where this sits in the wider split

This desk has covered the same question in other courts. On August 28, 2026 the Ninth Circuit ruled in a Nevada case that the Commodity Exchange Act does not preempt Nevada's gambling law, and on September 2, 2026 New Jersey asked the Supreme Court to resolve the resulting conflict with a Third Circuit ruling that went the other way. The Sixth Circuit's decision adds a third circuit on the states' side of that disagreement. Trade coverage describes the result as deepening the split between the circuits, which is the kind of conflict the Supreme Court usually weighs in on, though we have not seen any filing or statement about further review in these two cases and are not predicting one.

What this does not change

Ohio and Tennessee are not states with a live regulated iCasino market, and this ruling concerns prediction-market sports contracts, not online casino games or sweepstakes casinos. It is also a ruling on preliminary injunctions rather than a final judgment, so the underlying cases continue. We have not seen a first-party statement from Kalshi about whether it will keep offering the contracts to Ohio or Tennessee users, and readers should check the platform's own notices instead of assuming either outcome.