Case: 25-7187, 02/17/2026, DktEntry: 37.2, Page 35 of 41
As a matter of plain language interpretation, this “savings clause” only applies “[e]xcept as hereinabove provided” in CEA § 2(a)(1)(A). That means other laws that would ordinarily apply outside the field of “accounts, agreements . . . and transactions . . . traded or executed on a contract market” still apply, just not to transactions that are trading on CEA-governed markets. FTC v. Ken Roberts Co ., 276 F.3d 583, 591 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (observing that other agencies like the FTC “retain their jurisdiction over all matters beyond the confines” of “accounts, agreements, and transactions involving contracts of sale of a commodity for future delivery”) (quoting CEA § 2(a)(1)(A)). The “savings clause” preserves traditional, non-conflicting state powers, but does not empower states to use state powers against transactions on CEA-governed markets. Hunter v. FERC , 711 F.3d 155, 159 (D.C. Cir. 2013) (“To be clear, there are limits to what comes within CEA section 2(a)(1)(A)’s orbit, but once a scheme crosses the statute’s event horizon, the CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction.”). Thus the “savings clause” does not allow states to prohibit the very types of contracts that the CFTC is exclusively empowered to regulate. Properly interpreted, the “savings clause” means that the CEA does not displace traditional state authority to enforce state criminal or civil antifraud laws, nor does it displace state authority to regulate purely intrastate conduct or transactions. But the CEA explicitly displaces state attempts to regulate swaps that
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