Kalshi's Supreme Court Case Now Has a Docket Number: No. 26-299

KalshiEX LLC v. Flaherty began as a district court fight over New Jersey's cease-and-desist order against Kalshi's sports-event contracts, one Kalshi won at the preliminary injunction stage before the Third Circuit affirmed 2-1 on April 6, 2026, on federal preemption grounds. That made New Jersey the losing party with the option to ask the Supreme Court to step in.

New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum applied to the Court on June 26, 2026, for more time to prepare a certiorari petition. Justice Samuel Alito, who handles emergency applications from the Third Circuit, granted the extension but shortened it, giving New Jersey until August 4 rather than the September 3 it had requested.

New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport filed the actual petition on September 2, 2026, a roughly 332-page filing asking the Court to decide who regulates sports-event contracts. The Court docketed it on September 8 as No. 26-299, captioned Flaherty v. KalshiEX LLC.

The petition's central question is whether Kalshi's sports contracts are swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act, which would put them under exclusive federal jurisdiction, or state-regulated wagers subject to New Jersey's gambling law. Davenport's filing argues Kalshi has refused to follow any state's gambling laws while claiming its CFTC registration makes the contracts legal nationwide.

To make the case that the Court needs to intervene now rather than let the issue keep percolating in lower courts, the petition points directly at a ruling from the opposite coast: the Ninth Circuit's August 28, 2026 decision siding with Nevada on the identical legal question.

The Third Circuit's ruling in this case held that sports-event contracts meet the CEA's definition of a swap, which preempts New Jersey's gambling statute. The Ninth Circuit, ruling in Nevada's parallel case, held the opposite: that Kalshi had not shown the CEA preempts Nevada's gaming law, treating the contracts as unprotected wagers rather than federally regulated derivatives.

Two federal appellate courts reading the same statutory text and reaching opposite conclusions is one of the more reliable triggers for Supreme Court review, since only the Court can settle which reading controls nationwide. New Jersey's petition was pending before the Ninth Circuit's ruling came down, and the ruling gave it a cleaner conflict to cite.

Rather than appeal the Ninth Circuit loss directly to the Supreme Court, Kalshi petitioned the Ninth Circuit itself for en banc rehearing, reported around September 10, 2026, a bid that federal appeals courts grant rarely but that buys time before the panel ruling becomes final within the circuit.

Two of the companies whose Nevada appeals the same Ninth Circuit panel ruling had resolved alongside Kalshi's did not wait. Robinhood Derivatives filed its own certiorari petition on September 9, 2026, seeking direct Supreme Court review of the Ninth Circuit ruling, and Crypto.com's North American Derivatives Exchange unit filed a similar petition around September 11.

That leaves three separate certiorari petitions in front of the Court arising from the same underlying legal question: New Jersey's against the Third Circuit's pro-Kalshi ruling, and Robinhood's and Crypto.com's against the Ninth Circuit's ruling against Nevada's operators.

Kalshi's brief in opposition to New Jersey's petition was due 30 days after docketing, on October 8, under the Court's standard rule for responses to a certiorari petition. Kalshi's counsel, Neal Katyal, requested a 30-day extension on September 18, and the Court granted it without comment on September 22, moving the deadline to November 9.

A brief in opposition is not a ruling. It is the losing party's, here New Jersey's, chance to argue the Court should deny review, after which the Court will decide at a private conference whether to grant certiorari at all, a step that in an ordinary case can take weeks after briefing closes.

Whatever the Court eventually decides, on this petition, on the two arising from Nevada, or on some combination of them, the ruling would settle a question every sports-event-contract operator depends on: whether a CFTC registration displaces state gambling law nationwide, or only within the circuits that have said so. That answer currently changes depending on which side of the country an operator's litigation lands in.

A denial of certiorari would leave the current split standing, meaning the legal status of the same product could keep varying by circuit indefinitely. A grant would put the industry's core jurisdictional question in front of the only court that can resolve it for every state at once.