The NFL has filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to take up New Jersey's appeal of a Third Circuit ruling that placed Kalshi's sports event contracts under the CFTC's exclusive jurisdiction and shielded them from state gambling laws. The league, represented by former U.S. Attorney General William Barr, wants a ruling before the 2027 season.

The Thursday filing lands in the middle of a deepening circuit split. The Third Circuit held that Kalshi's sports contracts are "swaps" under the Commodity Exchange Act as amended by Dodd-Frank, preempting state gambling regulation. The Sixth and Ninth Circuits have ruled the opposite way, and only the Supreme Court can resolve the conflict.

The NFL sided with the Sixth and Ninth Circuits. It argued that Dodd-Frank's definition of a swap covers instruments that hedge existing risk, not bets that create new risk — meaning sports contracts belong under state gambling oversight, not federal commodities law.

What does the NFL want changed?

The brief details a list of safeguards the league says it requested from the CFTC and operators like Kalshi, and says they declined. Specifically, the NFL asked operators to:

• Ban contracts that a single person could easily manipulate
• Prohibit contracts tied to injuries or officiating
• Remove contracts whose outcomes are knowable in advance
• Set a minimum trading age of 21, matching state sports betting rules

The brief notes that 18-year-olds can currently trade on Kalshi, while most states require sports bettors to be 21. It also points out that the CFTC has just 543 employees nationwide, arguing the agency lacks the staffing to police sports markets at scale. Without league-specific lists of prohibited bettors, the brief states, operators' "nominal insider-trading policies or prohibitions are paper tigers."

The filing quantifies the stakes: NFL-related contracts accounted for $1.8 billion of the $3.3 billion traded across prediction markets on the season's first Sunday, according to the brief.

How likely is Supreme Court review?

Sports gaming attorney Daniel Wallach said the brief "meaningfully increases the chances of a cert grant" in a post on X. "It is extremely telling that the sports league which has most forcefully advocated for federal regulation is essentially saying 'this ain't it,'" he wrote.

Wallach noted that former CFTC and SEC Chair Gary Gensler and former Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut — both architects of Dodd-Frank — have also filed briefs backing New Jersey's petition.

Where do other leagues and operators stand?

The NFL is an outlier among major sports leagues. MLB named Polymarket its exclusive prediction market sponsor in March and signed an integrity agreement with the CFTC. The NHL became the first major league to license its trademarks to prediction markets. DraftKings and FanDuel have both launched prediction markets of their own.

The NFL is not asking for prediction markets to disappear. If the justices uphold the Third Circuit's ruling, the league said it would redouble efforts to persuade the CFTC, operators and Congress to adopt stronger integrity and consumer protections — with the 2027 season as its stated deadline for those measures to be in place.

The Supreme Court's decision on whether to grant certiorari will determine whether the question of federal versus state jurisdiction over sports event contracts gets resolved nationally, or continues to split by circuit.