Crypto.com derivatives arm asks Supreme Court to resolve sports-event contract preemption split

North American Derivatives Exchange, Inc., doing business as Crypto.com | Derivatives North America, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether the Commodity Exchange Act preempts state regulation of sports-event contracts traded on a federally regulated designated contract market. The filing is a request for review, not a grant, and no Supreme Court merits decision exists in the opened record.

The petition identifies the company as the plaintiff-appellant below and lists the related proceedings as North American Derivatives Exchange, Inc. v. State of Nevada, No. 25-7187 in the Ninth Circuit on Aug. 28, 2026, and No. 2:25-cv-978 in the District of Nevada on Oct. 14, 2025. Respondents include Nevada officials sued in their official capacities and the Nevada Resort Association as intervenor; the petition names Shay Dvoretzky of Skadden Arps as counsel of record.

The question presented and the statutory frame

The petition’s question presented is whether the CEA “preempts state regulation of sports-event contracts traded on a DCM.” It grounds that in 7 U.S.C. § 2(a)(1)(A), which gives the CFTC “exclusive jurisdiction” over swaps on designated contract markets, and in the swap definition at 7 U.S.C. § 1a(47)(A)(ii): a contract providing payment dependent on “the occurrence, nonoccurrence, or the extent of the occurrence of an event or contingency associated with a potential financial, economic, or commercial consequence.”

The same filing points to two congressional tools it says confirm the breadth of that definition: the “special rule” at 7 U.S.C. § 7a-2(c)(5)(C)(i)(V), empowering the CFTC to bar certain swaps including those that “involve … gaming,” and 15 U.S.C. § 8302(d)(1), which lets the CFTC “further define” the term “swap.”

The split Crypto.com wants the Court to resolve

Crypto.com’s petition says the Third Circuit’s KalshiEX, LLC v. Flaherty decision treats sports-event contracts as swaps triggering exclusive CFTC jurisdiction, while the Ninth Circuit reached the opposite conclusion in Nevada. The Ninth Circuit’s published opinion in KalshiEX, LLC v. Assad, No. 25-7516, filed Aug. 28, 2026, is in the record: it affirmed in part an order dissolving Kalshi’s preliminary injunction against Nevada enforcement and remanded for consideration of Kalshi’s election contracts.

According to the Ninth Circuit opinion, the Nevada Gaming Control Board had sent Kalshi a cease-and-desist letter, and Kalshi responded that it was not a sports betting platform but a DCM offering legal sports event contracts under exclusive CFTC oversight. The panel held Kalshi had not shown a likelihood that the CEA preempts Nevada gaming regulations as applied to its sports event contracts; under § 1a(47)(A)(ii), it said, the contracts were not “swaps” because they were sports bets. The panel also relied on 17 C.F.R. § 40.11, which categorically prohibits certain gaming-related contracts, while Judge Lee concurred that the statutory Special Rule appears discretionary rather than categorical, though § 40.11 currently bars gaming contracts.

Crypto.com’s argument, as summarized in its petition’s question and table of contents, is that sports-event contracts fit the statutory swap definition because payout turns on a sporting outcome tied to potential economic consequences, and that Congress’s express “gaming” reference in the special rule shows it contemplated swaps touching gambling rather than excluding them. A Crypto.com spokesperson told SBC Americas that the petition is “an important step toward obtaining clarity on who gets to regulate federally registered prediction markets” and said the company is “confident the Court will find that these important financial instruments are subject to exclusive CFTC oversight.” That is the company’s position, not a court ruling.

Parallel petitions raise the same issue from opposite sides

New Jersey officials have separately petitioned the Supreme Court from the Third Circuit side of the fight. In Flaherty v. KalshiEX, the New Jersey petition asks whether the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act “preempted States from regulating sports bets that occur within their jurisdictions if those bets are offered on markets registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.” Its related-proceedings list identifies KalshiEX, LLC v. Flaherty, No. 25-1922 in the Third Circuit and No. 25-2152 in the District of New Jersey.

The Ninth Circuit opinion’s counsel list also shows how many institutions weighed in there: the CFTC appeared as amicus curiae, as did New Jersey, Ohio, 37 other states and the District of Columbia; tribal gaming associations and federally recognized tribes; gaming-regulator associations; and gambling-policy groups. The opened excerpt lists counsel and amici but does not state each brief’s position, and it does not establish any Supreme Court action to combine or hear the cases.

Regulatory backdrop remains separate from the merits

The CFTC said on June 25, 2026 that it was seeking comment on a notice of proposed rulemaking for data reporting requirements covering certain fully collateralized event contracts, proposing amendments to Parts 15, 16 and 17 and an alternate reporting framework for contracts that had been subject to staff no-action letters since 2017. Chairman Michael S. Selig said the agency would “no longer regulate market participants through a patchwork of no-action letters, which serve as band-aids for unworkable regulations,” calling the proposal a step toward “future-proofing” event-contract rules in the CFTC release. That release concerns reporting requirements; it does not decide the gaming special-rule dispute or any preemption question now before the Court.

For traders and platforms, the immediate status is narrow: petitions have been filed and opposed interests are clearly defined, but the Supreme Court has not agreed to hear Crypto.com, New Jersey, or any related case in the opened evidence. Until the Court acts, the Ninth Circuit’s published approach to Nevada enforcement and the Third Circuit precedent described by the petitioners remain part of an unresolved federal split.