On January 21, 2026, a Suffolk County Superior Court judge in Massachusetts granted the state Attorney General’s motion for a preliminary injunction barring Kalshi from offering sports event contracts in Massachusetts without a state gaming license. The order took effect at noon on January 23, 2026 — making Massachusetts the first US state to formally block Kalshi’s sports markets at the court level.
The decision did not directly affect New Mexico, but it has become foundational precedent for the federal lawsuit four NM tribes filed against Kalshi in May 2026.
What the court ruled
The Suffolk County court found that Massachusetts was “likely to succeed on the merits” of its underlying gaming-law claim against Kalshi. Two key elements of the ruling:
- The court rejected Kalshi’s preemption defense as “overly broad.” Kalshi argued that because the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) oversees event contracts under the Commodity Exchange Act, federal law preempts states from regulating those contracts as gambling. The court disagreed, ruling that Kalshi “did not establish that Congress intended to strip states of their authority to regulate gambling by preempting the entire field of state regulation.”
- Sports event contracts are gambling for state-law purposes. The court treated Kalshi’s binary “yes/no” wagers on sporting outcomes as functionally equivalent to traditional sports wagers — therefore subject to Massachusetts gaming licensing.
The Massachusetts Attorney General’s office had argued in its September 2025 filing that Kalshi was offering “an addictive betting product without a license to consumers as young as 18 in high school,” echoing concerns NM tribes have raised about the platform’s 18+ age policy versus the 21+ tribal sports-betting age.
Why NM tribes are citing it
The May 12, 2026 federal complaint by the Mescalero Apache, Pojoaque, Sandia, and Isleta plaintiffs makes substantially the same arguments the Massachusetts court accepted:
- Kalshi accepts users aged 18+, while NM tribal gaming ordinances require sports bettors to be 21+
- The platform fails to enforce geolocation that would keep users on tribal lands from accessing sports markets
- Operating in NM without tribal authorization violates the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and the 2015 tribal-state compacts
The Massachusetts ruling is not binding on the federal court in New Mexico, but it is the strongest existing decision on the merits of the state-vs-federal preemption question.
The split: Massachusetts vs. New Jersey & Tennessee
The state-vs-federal picture is mixed. As of mid-2026:
- Massachusetts and Ohio state courts have sided with state regulators, ruling that Kalshi must comply with state gaming laws.
- Federal courts in New Jersey and Tennessee have at least temporarily blocked state enforcement against Kalshi, accepting more of the preemption argument.
- Washington state filed its own lawsuit in March 2026, ramping up state pressure.
- Kalshi faces more than 20 civil lawsuits in total.
Daniel Wallach, a professor at the University of New Hampshire and one of the leading sports-gambling-law scholars, told NBC News that Massachusetts represented “the first such ban in the US.” Industry observers expect the underlying preemption question to reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
What it means for NM
If federal courts ultimately adopt the Massachusetts reading — that CFTC oversight does not preempt state and tribal gambling regulation — the New Mexico tribes’ Kalshi suit becomes much stronger and prediction-market operators would have to either obtain state licenses, partner with tribes, or shut down sports markets in jurisdictions where commercial online sports betting is not authorized.
If the preemption defense wins at the Supreme Court level, the practical effect would be a federally protected back door into NM’s market without compact renegotiation — a result that would almost certainly trigger renewed legislative debate over legalizing state-licensed online sports betting in NM.