Case: 25-7504, 01/16/2026, DktEntry: 38.1, Page 41 of 47
First, Kalshi’s reading flouts the clear-statement rule. The Su- preme Court has instructed that where a proposed reading of federal law would “significantly alter the balance between federal and state power,” only “exceedingly clear language” to that effect will suffice. Ala. Ass’n of Realtors v. HHS , 594 U.S. 758, 764 (2021). This clear-statement rule is rooted in “essential principles of federalism,” which “require[] that Con- gress treat the States in a manner consistent with their status as resid- uary sovereigns and joint participants in the governance of this Nation.” Alden v. Maine , 527 U.S. 706, 748 (1999). The clear-statement rule controls here. Sports gaming historically has been—and remains—governed by the states; a fact expressly incor- porated in multiple federal statutes. See supra , at 3-11. Congress has not silently reworked that established balance, and it certainly did not do so in a statute that never mentions sports wagering. See Whitman v. Am. Trucking Ass’n , 531 U.S. 457, 468 (2001) (“[Congress] does not, one might say, hide elephants in mouseholes.”). Indeed, the clear-statement rule is perhaps especially potent in this case, because Kalshi’s legal the- ory would transgress power held by a third sovereign (the Plaintiff
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