Case 3:25-cv-02121-VDO Document 58-1 Filed 01/16/26 Page 25 of 29
other words, Coinbase’s deregulatory elephant was hidden in a statutory mousehole far too small for the Supreme Court to notice when deciding whether sports betting would be legal. 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 Coinbase, therefore, creates a world where Congress repealed the comprehensive regulatory scheme set forth in IGRA, similar structures set up by state law, all tribal-state gaming compacts, and the federal policy requiring states to prohibit sports betting, as codified in PASPA. And Coinbase incredulously argues all of this happened without even a whisper of legislative intent. Coinbase’s revisionist history cannot withstand even the slightest scrutiny. As the Nevada District Court aptly stated, “[i]t is absurd to think that Congress intended for DCMs to turn into nationwide gambling venues on every topic under the sun to the exclusion of state regulation and with no comparable federal regulator without ever mentioning that was the goal when Congress added swaps to the CEA in 2010.” Hendrick , 2025 WL 3286282, at *9 (footnote omitted). III. Coinbase’s Preemption Argument Would Violate the Private Nondelegation Doctrine. Coinbase’s preemption argument turns on the extraordinary claim that Congress delegated the power to preempt state law to an interested private party simply by self-certifying its own sports-betting contracts and listing them on its exchange. The private non-delegation doctrine, however, guards against precisely the type of unchecked, privately exercised powers upon which Coinbase relies. See Carter v. Carter Coal Co. , 298 U.S. 238, 311 (1936).
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