A Louisiana judge has ordered Kalshi, Polymarket and eight other operators to stop offering event contracts to anyone in the state, granting an emergency request from Attorney General Liz Murrill that brands the products illegal, unlicensed gaming. Judge Jeffrey Johnson signed the temporary restraining order on November 12, 2026, hours after Murrill filed suit, and Kalshi hit back the same day with an emergency challenge in federal court: a single state filing has become the sharpest test yet of whether federally regulated prediction markets can be switched off one state at a time.
Johnson sits on Louisiana's 21st Judicial District Court in Tangipahoa Parish, a state trial court, and his order is ex parte, meaning he granted it on Murrill's request alone, before the companies had a chance to argue back. It runs until November 22, 2026 unless extended, and Johnson has set a hearing for 9 a.m. on November 30 to decide whether to replace it with a longer preliminary injunction.
What the order actually blocks
The restraining order covers event contracts tied to sports, elections, entertainment awards and other real-world outcomes. An event contract is a financial instrument whose payout depends on whether something happens (a team wins, a candidate is elected, a film takes an Oscar): the platforms describe them as regulated derivatives, while Louisiana treats them as gaming products that require a state license the companies do not hold.
That distinction is the whole case. On the platforms' side, a contract on a Louisiana college basketball game is a position in a federally overseen market; on Murrill's side, it is sports gaming dressed up as finance.
Ten companies named in one suit
Murrill's complaint names ten defendants at once: Kalshi, Polymarket, Robinhood (the trading app whose Robinhood Derivatives arm sells event contracts), Coinbase, Crypto.com, Gemini, ForecastEx (an exchange affiliated with Interactive Brokers), Novig, Underdog and ProphetX. Reporting on the filing describes it as the first time a single state lawsuit has swept in every operator it accuses of breaking local gaming law at once, rather than picking them off one by one.
Louisiana is not acting alone. It is one of more than a dozen states that have moved against prediction markets through civil enforcement, part of a push by state regulators to assert that whatever the CFTC permits in Washington, state gaming law stops at the state line.
The preemption fight at the center
The CFTC is the federal agency that oversees derivatives markets in the United States, and it has registered Kalshi and several of the other named exchanges. The platforms' core argument is that this registration gives Washington exclusive authority over their contracts: if a product is a CFTC-regulated event contract, they say, a state cannot separately outlaw it as unlicensed gaming. Louisiana's answer is that calling a gaming product a "contract" does not exempt it from state law, and that offering it to residents without a gaming license is simply illegal.
"For too long, they have violated our laws with impunity," Murrill said in announcing the suit. "No longer: I am seeking an immediate restraining order and an injunction to restore the rule of law in Louisiana."
Kalshi and Polymarket counterattack in federal court
The companies saw this coming and moved first. Kalshi sued Louisiana officials in federal court on October 23, 2026, and Polymarket's US entity filed a parallel federal suit on October 27, each asking a federal judge to block the state from enforcing its gaming rules against them. When Johnson granted the state order on November 12, Kalshi responded within hours, filing an emergency motion for its own federal restraining order to stop Louisiana enforcement before the state court order could bite.
The result is a two-track collision: a state judge has ordered the platforms dark in Louisiana, while a federal judge is being asked to order Louisiana to leave them alone. Whichever court moves decisively first effectively sets the rule for the others.
What changes for traders and the sector
For anyone in Louisiana, the practical effect is immediate: the named platforms are supposed to stop offering event contracts to users in the state while the order stands. For the industry, the stakes are larger than one state's traders, because the business these companies have built assumes a single federal rulebook rather than fifty.
If Louisiana's theory holds, every operator faces the prospect of licensing, geoblocking or litigating state by state, a structure the current model was never designed to carry. If the platforms' preemption argument wins, the wave of state enforcement actions loses its footing at once.
The dates that decide it
Two deadlines now frame the story. The restraining order lapses on November 22, 2026 unless Johnson extends it, and his preliminary-injunction hearing on November 30 will decide whether the state keeps the platforms blocked for the duration of the case. Running alongside both is the federal docket built from Kalshi's October 23 suit, its November 12 emergency motion and Polymarket's October 27 filing.
The fight that matters is the one Kalshi started hours after being shut down. If a federal judge rules that CFTC registration shields these contracts from state gaming law, Murrill's order becomes a dead letter and the states lined up behind Louisiana lose their main weapon. If it does not, every prediction market in the country has just learned it can be unplugged one parish at a time.
