Federal judge bars Kalshi from offering sports contracts on California tribes' lands
U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley on November 4, 2026 granted the California tribes' motion for a preliminary injunction in Blue Lake Rancheria v. Kalshi, barring Kalshi Inc. and KalshiEX from offering any sports contracts on the tribes' Indian lands. The one-page order follows a Ninth Circuit ruling in September that the tribes were likely to succeed on their Indian Gaming Regulatory Act claim, and sets two compliance deadlines in November.
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Overview
- Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted the tribes' preliminary injunction motion (Dkt. No. 35\) on November 4, 2026, after a further status conference that day.
- Kalshi Inc. and KalshiEX are enjoined from offering any sports contracts on the tribes' Indian lands; the order lists baseball, tennis, pickleball, soccer, basketball, football, golf, chess, esports, hockey, motorsports, boxing, wrestling and UFC events as included.
- The tribes must give Kalshi maps of their Indian lands by November 13, and Kalshi must file a compliance status report within 21 days of the order.
- The order names only the two Kalshi entities; co-defendants Robinhood Markets and Robinhood Derivatives are not mentioned.
- The same judge had denied the motion in November 2025; the Ninth Circuit reversed in part on September 16, 2026.
A federal judge in San Francisco has barred Kalshi from offering sports contracts on the lands of the California tribes suing it under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), granting a preliminary injunction she had denied a year earlier.
In a one-page order re: preliminary injunction dated November 4, 2026, U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley wrote that, "following the further status conference held on November 4, 2026, the Court GRANTS Plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction." The case is Blue Lake Rancheria, et al. v. Kalshi Inc., et al., No. 3:25-cv-06162-JSC (N.D. Cal.). The order does not set out the court's reasoning.
What the injunction covers
The order says Kalshi Inc. and KalshiEX "are enjoined from offering on the Tribes' Indian lands any sports contracts, including, but not limited to, contracts that facially involve, relate to, or reference the sports of baseball, tennis, pickleball, soccer, basketball, football, golf, chess, esports, hockey, motorsports, boxing, wrestling, and Ultimate Fighting Championship events."
It names only the two Kalshi entities. Robinhood Markets, Inc. and Robinhood Derivatives LLC, which are also defendants in the suit, are not mentioned in the order.
November deadlines
The order sets two deadlines:
- By November 13, 2026, the plaintiff tribes must provide Kalshi with maps delineating the boundaries of their Indian lands.
- Within 21 days of the order, Kalshi must file an updated status report on the steps it has taken to comply.
Geofencing dispute
In an October 14 joint status report, Kalshi said the injunction motion was moot because, after the Ninth Circuit ruling, it had worked with GeoComply to geofence the tribes' lands, so that people located there "should not be able to trade sports event contracts" on its app or website. The tribes said in the same filing that a member of the Blue Lake Rancheria Gaming Commission later placed a trade on the Kalshi app while on the Blue Lake reservation, and asked for a court-ordered process to verify the geofencing independently. Kalshi said it was discussing the issue with GeoComply.
On October 21, Corley ordered the parties to discuss a possible geofencing stipulation, allowed the tribes to amend their complaint to add the Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians as a plaintiff, with an amended complaint due November 4, and terminated Kalshi's and Robinhood's motions to dismiss without prejudice.
Ninth Circuit remand
The motion was filed in September 2025 by Blue Lake Rancheria and Chicken Ranch Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians, together with the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians, which later left the case. Corley denied it on November 10, 2025, finding the tribes had not shown a likelihood of success.
On September 16, 2026, a Ninth Circuit panel (Murguia, McKeown and Paez) reversed in part in No. 25-7504. It held that the tribes were likely to succeed on their IGRA claim: Kalshi's sports event contracts are class III gaming, are "located on Indian lands" when users enter them from tribal territory, and violate the tribes' secretarial procedures and gaming ordinances. It also held that the Commodity Exchange Act's exclusive jurisdiction does not extend to those contracts, affirmed the rejection of the tribes' Lanham Act false-advertising claim, and sent the case back for Corley to weigh the remaining preliminary injunction factors.
The tribal case is one of several Kalshi suits listed in AskSpinner's prediction market litigation tracker. In a separate IGRA case brought by the Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin, the Seventh Circuit agreed to hear Kalshi's appeal in October, and on November 4 the Ninth Circuit denied Kalshi's rehearing petition in its Nevada case.
Kalshi had not published a statement on the order as of 4:00 a.m. Beijing time on November 6 (12:00 p.m. PT on November 5).
Photo: Diarmuid Greene/Web Summit / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (2021 file photo, cropped)
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Teresa Domingo is an editor at AskSpinner News, turning fresh iGaming insights into engaging, accessible content. Teresa’s writing connects the latest developments with the stories behind them, aiming to give busy industry readers both a timely update and a new idea worth following.
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