Louisiana Judge Orders Kalshi, 30 Others to Geofence the State

A Louisiana judge has ordered Kalshi and 30 other entities to geofence the state. Judge Jeffrey Johnson signed a temporary restraining order barring all 31 entities from offering or facilitating event contracts to people in Louisiana without a state license.

The order covers two distinct activities. The named entities cannot provide event contracts. They also cannot help facilitate them. Both prohibitions apply to serving people located inside Louisiana.

Polymarket U.S., Robinhood and Coinbase are among the other entities named in the filing. The geofencing requirement extends across all 31 entities, not just Kalshi. Geofencing restricts access based on a user's location, so the order targets event-contract activity reaching Louisiana residents specifically. The licensing condition is identical for every entity on the list: no offering, no facilitating, without a Louisiana license.

What does this change for the named platforms?

For Kalshi, the immediate operational consequence is a forced access restriction. The company must block Louisiana-based users from its event-contract products or risk violating a court order. The same applies to Polymarket U.S., Robinhood and Coinbase, plus the roughly 27 other entities named. Each must implement location-based blocking or pursue a state license to continue serving Louisiana residents lawfully.

The order also raises the compliance bar beyond the platforms themselves. Because the prohibition covers facilitation as well as offering, entities that help others distribute event contracts in Louisiana face exposure too. That could sweep in intermediaries, partners and infrastructure providers connected to the named firms.

A state-level counterweight in the prediction-market fight

The ruling escalates a broader dispute over who regulates prediction markets. Federal platforms have pushed to offer event contracts nationwide under national frameworks. State regulators have pushed back, insisting on their own licensing authority. Judge Johnson's order puts state licensing at the center of that fight, at least for Louisiana.

The practical effect is a constrained operating map. The named entities now face a patchwork: federal clearance on one side, state-by-state licensing requirements on the other. For firms with national footprints like Robinhood and Coinbase, that means treating Louisiana as a restricted zone for event contracts until they secure a license or the order is lifted.

A temporary restraining order is exactly that — temporary. But it signals how states intend to police prediction markets: through licensing regimes enforced by courts, one jurisdiction at a time. Expect the geofencing fight to spread to other states as regulators test whether the federal-state boundary holds.