1. CFTC Expands Its Prediction-Market Jurisdiction Fight and Recalibrates Its Enforcement Posture
The CFTC moved aggressively to assert federal primacy over prediction markets. On May 28, a week after Rhode Island’s attorney general demanded that prediction markets “stand down” and “disgorge their profits,” the agency intervened in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island to block the state’s effort to apply its gambling laws against CFTC-registered contract markets.
Prediction-market operators have pushed back as well. On May 27, KalshiEX LLC filed a complaint for permanent injunction and declaratory relief against Minnesota’s attorney general, governor, and gambling-enforcement director, alleging that Minnesota’s SF 3432 “impermissibly usurps the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction by banning certain event contracts, including those traded on federally designated contract markets,” in violation of the Supremacy Clause.