Case 2:25-cv-01541-JCM-DJA Document 7 Filed 08/19/25 Page 26 of 31
B. The CEA’s Preemption of State Gaming Laws as Applied to Sports-Related Event Contracts Includes Those Opened and Traded Through Robinhood’s Platform. Given the broad, express preemptive language and clear Congressional intent, the Court’s prior holding that the CEA likely preempts the state gaming laws that the Board threatened to enforce against Kalshi in connection with sports-related event contracts was well founded. The same result is compelled regardless of whether those event contract positions are opened and traded through Kalshi’s interface (as was the case in KalshiEx , 2025 WL 1073495) or through Robinhood’s (as is the case here). First , Kalshi and Robinhood participate in transactions involving “swaps or contracts of sale of a commodity for future delivery” traded on a DCM, and these transactions therefore fall squarely within the statutory grant of exclusive jurisdiction to the CFTC. See 7 U.S.C. § 2(a)(1)(A) (granting CFTC “exclusive jurisdiction” over all “accounts, agreements . . . , and transactions involving swaps or contracts of sale of a commodity for future delivery” that are “traded or executed on a contract market designated” by the CFTC). Because it is the transaction on a regulated exchange over which the CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction, see id. , the CFTC must have jurisdiction over the entire transaction and all participants. This includes entities like Robinhood that accept orders or otherwise facilitate transactions, as well as entities like Kalshi that execute transactions. See id. § 1a(28)(A) (CEA expressly envisions FCMs facilitating transactions in swaps and commodities for future delivery). If states could regulate some but not all entities relevant to these transactions, such regulation would infringe on the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction and fracture what Congress intended to be a uniform set of regulations for commodity futures and swaps trading. A state cannot circumvent the exclusive jurisdiction of the CFTC by enforcing state law against an entity involved in facilitating a transaction when the state has been enjoined from enforcing state law against the entity involved in executing that same transaction. Indeed, as the CFTC itself recently explained to the D.C. Circuit, “due to federal preemption, event contracts never violate
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