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Federal judge squashes Kalshi bid to block prediction market regulation by Iowa
Filed 8h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk
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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Designed by Edward Klauck. · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
A federal judge in Des Moines denied Kalshi's bid to block Iowa from regulating it under state gambling law, ruling the company is unlikely to win its argument that federal commodities law preempts state gambling statutes.
Judge Stephen Locher found the Commodity Exchange Act's language about swaps and futures contracts doesn't stretch to cover the outcome of a football game, and that Congress would have needed to be explicit if it meant to preempt state gambling laws.
Locher also noted Kalshi had advertised itself as 'the first app for legal sports betting in all 50 states' while apparently never bothering to check with Iowa's Attorney General or gaming commission whether that claim was accurate.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
A company can call its product whatever it wants in the ad copy, but a judge is going to read the actual words in the statute, and those words don't say 'football.' Kalshi built a business on a semantic bet and lost the semantic bet. That's a tidy bit of irony for an outfit whose whole pitch is letting you wager on outcomes.
