A second court ruling has gone the way of market platform Kalshi in an ongoing series of cases.
A New Jersey District Court judge has ruled in agreement with a previous decision in Nevada, deciding that Kalshi stands a fair chance of success in its lawsuit against the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE).
The suit comes after the DGE issued a cease and desist order against Kalshi to block the company from offering event contracts for individual sports events. A judge in New Jersey has now awarded Kalshi’s request for a temporary injunction, noting that the ruling was influenced in part by the previous decision in Nevada.
Part of the decision also came down to, as Judge Edward S. Kiel explained, that the costs of excluding New Jersey residents from Kalshi’s offering would be tens of millions of dollars.
Generally speaking, Judge Kiel was convinced that Kalshi had a fair shot of winning the case, as the law placed Kalshi’s operations within the remit of the Commodity Future Trading Commission (CFTC).
“I am persuaded that Kalshi’s sports-related event contracts fall within the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction and am unconvinced by defendants’ arguments to the contrary,” the judge wrote.
What court ruling is next for Kalshi?
The judge also noted that a lack of intervention from the CFTC is also in Kalshi’s favor, because if these contracts were counter to public interest, an intervention would have occurred. No further action appears to be on the cards in New Jersey; however, it’s not the end of the proceedings.
Kalshi is still waiting for the decision from a court in Maryland to see whether it follows the same line as the other two decisions in Nevada and New Jersey. The market platform has filed against the Maryland Lottery & Gaming there, after the regulators sent a similar cease and desist.
Featured image: Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
