Will New Jersey lead another charge to SCOTUS, this time against prediction markets?

Just eight years after the state of New Jersey successfully petitioned the US Supreme Court to repeal the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which opened the floodgates of sports betting expansion across the country, the Garden State has again petitioned the high court, this time to defend its sports betting jurisdiction against the rise of prediction markets and sports event contracts.

On Wednesday, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport announced that her office filed a petition for writ of certiorari following an appeals court verdict from earlier this year that went in favour of prediction markets. That 2-1 verdict from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals was handed down in April, and New Jersey had until Thursday to petition the high court.

The petition poses the question of whether the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was enacted in 2010 in the aftermath of the Great Recession, “preempted States from regulating sports bets that occur within their jurisdictions if those bets are offered on markets registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission”. Prediction markets have argued that their event contracts are financial derivatives regulated by the CFTC whereas many states contend that they are simply sports bets by another name.

There is no guarantee the Supreme Court will hear the case but a separate appeals court ruling from 28 August bolsters its chances. In that case, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit ruled unanimously in favour of the state of Nevada, creating a circuit court split, which is a hallmark of many Supreme Court cases.

“We’re calling on the Supreme Court to resolve this issue and recognize that Congress did not silently make the sports-betting industry immune from state law,” Davenport said in a statement.

SCOTUS all that counts

New Jersey stakeholders are no stranger to the importance of a Supreme Court review. The state lost every case in the lead-up to the PASPA repeal, except for the one that mattered most in the end, and it could be the same in this matter as Kalshi has prevailed thus far in state court and the Third Circuit. Davenport’s petition cites that fateful PASPA ruling in its introduction.

“Just eight years ago, this Court reiterated that “each State is free to act on its own” in regulating sports betting,” the petition says. “But Kalshi has a different view. Kalshi bills itself as “the first app for legal sports betting in all 50 states” and believes it can offer that “legal sports betting without following the sports-gambling laws of any of those 50 States.”

In a statement, Kalshi spokesperson Dani Lever said the platform is “an open, nationwide, financial exchange” that “cannot be regulated by 50 different regulators”, per CDC Gaming.

“Both the Third Circuit and the District of New Jersey side with Kalshi, because the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction prompt state law,” Lever said, adding that “nothing in New Jersey’s filing” changes that view.

Each Supreme Court term begins on the first Monday in October and runs through late June or early July. The court typically receives about 7,000-8,000 writ petitions and grants about 80, or 1%, each term. Four of the nine sitting justices must vote to accept a case. Five current justices — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor — were on the bench in 2018 for the PASPA case.

There are no SCOTUS-prediction market contracts currently on Kalshi but Polymarket lists a 41% probability that the court will accept an event contract case by 31 December.

Two years in the making

A hearing before the Supreme Court would be the culmination of what has been the biggest sports betting-related development since PASPA. Perhaps no other issue has united gaming stakeholders from various companies, tribes, states and regulators.

Beginning with the US presidential elections in November 2024, when prediction markets catapulted into mainstream culture, their rise has been undeniable. Kalshi and Polymarket have seen their valuations balloon to $40 billion and $21 billion, respectively, and the majority of the top US bookmakers have scrambled to expand into the prediction space in various forms, either by building their own exchanges, acquiring existing ones or engaging in market-making.

Commercial sports betting generated just under $17 billion in nationwide revenue in 2025, which is why Davenport asserts that the “stakes of this case are exceptionally high”. Kalshi and Polymarket alone posted more than $45 billion in trading volume, which is similar but not identical to betting revenue, in August. That was a 15% decline from July, although that drop is attributed to the conclusion of the FIFA World Cup tournament that month per Yahoo! Finance.

The American Gaming Association estimates that the exchanges have siphoned more than $1.3 billion in would-be tax revenue from states. One of the AGA’s primary spokespeople pin its fight against prediction markets is former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who championed the PASPA case to the Supreme Court.

CFTC embraces prediction markets

As with PASPA, this matter revolves heavily around federalism versus states’ rights. Traditional sports betting is governed by individual state regulators with varying laws and regulations. Federal derivatives are regulated by the CFTC, which has fully embraced prediction markets under US President Donald Trump after rejecting them in previous administrations.

The web of lawsuits and court rulings involving prediction markets has greatly complicated the issue of jurisdiction. Kalshi has been forced to limit trading in multiple states, most notably Nevada, and the CFTC has gone to unprecedented lengths to protect its licencees. This includes suing nine states directly and issuing emergency orders to reject state mandates.

CFTC Chairman Michael Selig is currently the lone sitting commissioner for an agency that traditionally features a bipartisan group of five. Selig has repeatedly defended both the legitimacy of prediction markets as financial assets and the role of the CFTC in overseeing them. The CFTC under his direction has embarked on a series of rule proposals regarding prediction markets, though detractors argue that the proposed changes still allow for sports contracts and in some ways could be seen as a tightening of the belt to make a Supreme Court review look more favourable.

“It’s not a question of whether innovations like blockchain, artificial intelligence, and prediction markets will transform our markets. It’s a question of where this innovation will take place and who will write the rules,” Selig said during a meeting of the CFTC’s Innovation Advisory Committee on 20 August, which featured the CEOs of Kalshi, Polymarket, DraftKings, CME Group and more.