{"id":19542,"date":"2026-07-28T05:24:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T00:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=19542"},"modified":"2026-07-28T05:24:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T00:24:20","slug":"minnesota-prediction-market-ban-blocked-by-federal-judge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=19542","title":{"rendered":"Minnesota prediction market ban blocked by federal judge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_fit_1500w\/rockcms\/2026-07\/260727-minnesota-state-capitol-bf-1517-5341f7.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p id=\"anchor-d994d4\" class=\"body-graf\">A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction pausing Minnesota\u2019s first-of-its-kind prediction market ban Monday, days before it was slated to go into effect. The ruling comes after the Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, along with Kalshi and Polymarket US, filed lawsuits responding to the law, which was scheduled to take effect Saturday.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-9b8650\" class=\"body-graf\">U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez ruled that the plaintiffs \u201chave met their burden to show they are likely to succeed, at least in part,\u201d on their claims that federal law pre-empts the ban, and that they face a threat of irreparable harm if it took effect.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-03a040\" class=\"body-graf\">The order forbids enforcement of the law against entities registered as designated contract markets with the CFTC.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-cb0059\" class=\"body-graf\">The plaintiffs argue the ban is pre-empted by federal law, which gives the CFTC exclusive authority to regulate the event contracts traded on their federally registered exchanges. <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-108e55\" class=\"body-graf\">Menendez wrote in a footnote of the order that \u201cthe Minnesota statute may not be preempted in all its applications. But the Court finds the state law is likely preempted in many respects. Therefore, temporarily enjoining enforcement of the statute maintains the status quo while enabling further development on this issue and others.\u201d<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-e3a82e\" class=\"body-graf\">The decision comes following the CFTC\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.mnd.234000\/gov.uscourts.mnd.234000.74.0.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">letter Monday<\/a>, which informed the court that it planned to escalate its motion to the appellate court if it didn\u2019t receive a response by the next day. <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-9a105b\" class=\"body-graf\">The CFTC has made several efforts to stop Minnesota\u2019s prediction market ban and initially asked the court for a decision by July 17. The court declined to give an answer by then, but acknowledged the need for an expeditious ruling in a July 2 hearing. <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-111b18\" class=\"body-graf\">Polymarket and Kalshi argued that Minnesota\u2019s ban would cause \u201cirreparable harm\u201d to their companies. Polymarket argued that the law would disrupt what it called \u201ca nationally uniform market\u201d and violate a First Amendment right to advertise, which it said could not be remedied through damages. Menendez said the court did not need to decide the First Amendment questions at this stage. <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-059ef5\" class=\"body-graf\">Minnesota\u2019s ban had no language that punished in-state residents for using the prediction markets, but made it so that companies could not operate within the state. <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-625ddf\" class=\"body-graf\">Minnesota embedded the ban in a broader public safety bill, characterizing the markets as gambling, and thus, a public health and safety issue. <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-12ce3e\" class=\"body-graf\">\u201cGambling has always been a public health and a public safety issue since states have been regulating it, and that has always been an uncontested fact,\u201d Minnesota state Rep. Emily Greenman said in an interview with NBC News.  <\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-6b52b6\" class=\"body-graf\">Minnesota isn\u2019t the only state pushing back on prediction markets. Arizona filed criminal charges against Kalshi in March in efforts to ban transactions that mimic sports betting. But a federal judge blocked the prosecution, finding that federal law pre-empts the state\u2019s laws on gambling.<\/p>\n<p id=\"anchor-39a240\" class=\"endmark body-graf\">Nevada\u2019s state court extended a temporary ban of Kalshi in the state, and Utah, where gambling is illegal, recently banned proposition betting, which applies to prediction markets. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction pausing Minnesota\u2019s first-of-its-kind prediction market ban Monday, days before it was slated to go into effect. The ruling comes after the Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, along with Kalshi and Polymarket US, filed lawsuits responding to the law, which was scheduled to take effect Saturday&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_nbcnews-fp-1200-630,f_auto,q_auto:best\/rockcms\/2026-07\/260727-minnesota-state-capitol-bf-1517-5341f7.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}