CNN
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A federal judge made way on Thursday for legal political gambling in the United States, rejecting a federal watchdog’s last-minute effort to delay a prediction market from offering bets on the November elections.
The platform, Kalshi, launched congressional control contracts early Thursday afternoon, which allow Americans to place bets on which party will be in control of the House and Senate in 2025. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which argued that such wagers were illegal and could harm the integrity of elections, appealed the judge’s decision to the DC Circuit shortly after it was issued.
Last week, District Judge Jia Cobb in Washington, DC, sided with Kalshi in its dispute with the CFTC and formally released her opinion Thursday, saying the agency exceeded its statutory authority when it blocked Kalshi from offering the contracts last year.
“Kalshi’s contracts do not involve unlawful activity or gaming. They involve elections, which are neither,” Cobb wrote in her opinion. She also denied a request by the government during Thursday’s hearing to block Kalshi from offering contracts pending its appeal.
Kalshi had warned that pausing Cobb’s ruling would be “devastating,” dismissing the agency’s request as “an attempt to run out the clock” and “win in practice even…
