Case 4:25-cv-14092-SDK-KGA ECF No. 29-1, PageID.519 Filed 01/26/26 Page 30 of 32
Second, sports betting has a “unique place in American history and society,” and therefore its own “political history.” See FDA v. Brown & Williamson , 529 U.S. 120, 159–60 (2000). Given this history, at the time of the 2010 CEA amendments, Congress had already “for better or for worse, . . . created a distinct regulatory scheme” for sports betting—namely, PASPA. Id. The conflict between Coinbase’s argument that the CEA’s 2010 amendments authorized sports betting nationwide and the existence of PASPA’s nationwide sports-betting prohibition in 2010 therefore indicates that Congress could not have intended to regulate sports betting in the way that Coinbase now claims. “Given this history and the breadth of the authority that [Coinbase] has asserted [the CFTC has],” this Court should not defer to Coinbase’s “expansive construction” of the CEA. See id. at 160. Ignoring history, context, and common sense, Coinbase presents an alternate reality in which a statutory scheme whose scope is limited to addressing the risk, discovery, and dissemination of commodity pricing information, see 7 U.S.C. § 5(a)–(b), exclusively governs nationwide sports betting, including that occurring on Indian lands. Coinbase therefore creates a world where Congress repealed the comprehensive regulatory scheme set forth in IGRA and the federal policy requiring states to prohibit sports betting, as codified in PASPA. And Coinbase incredibly argues all of this happened without even a whisper of legislative intent.
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