California Tribes Win Injunction Blocking Kalshi Sports Contracts on Their Lands

California tribes have secured an injunction against Kalshi, turning their September appellate victory into an order restricting sports contracts on their lands.

U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley granted preliminary relief in the Northern District of California, barring Kalshi Inc. and KalshiEX from offering sports contracts on the plaintiff tribes’ Indian lands. The order covers contracts referencing everything from football and basketball to esports, chess and combat sports.

The plaintiffs must provide Kalshi with boundary maps of their Indian lands by Nov. 13. The restriction is geographically targeted, not a ban on Kalshi throughout California, and it is preliminary relief rather than a final judgment ending the lawsuit.

Gaming attorney Daniel Wallach highlighted the development on X, describing the California tribes as the first in the nation to secure a preliminary injunction against Kalshi.

🚨 BREAKING: California tribes become the first in the nation to secure a preliminary injunction against Kalshi.

U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley bars Kalshi from offering sports contracts on the Tribes’ Indian lands.

A major development in tribal gaming litigation. pic.twitter.com/o0tDCIyXVV

— Daniel Wallach (@WALLACHLEGAL) November 5, 2026

Sports contracts face a geographic restriction

The order’s language reaches beyond a narrow list of familiar sportsbook wagers.

“Kalshi Inc. and KalshiEX are enjoined from offering on the Tribes’ Indian lands any sports contracts,” it states, including contracts that “facially involve, relate to, or reference” baseball, tennis, pickleball, soccer, basketball, football, golf, chess, esports, hockey, motorsports, boxing, wrestling and UFC events.

That breadth matters for a platform offering sports through financial-contract terminology rather than a conventional betting slip. The restriction focuses on what the contracts concern and where they are offered.

The Ninth Circuit supplied the legal foundation

The injunction follows the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal’s September 16 decision in Blue Lake Rancheria v. Kalshi.

Blue Lake Rancheria and Chicken Ranch Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians challenged sports contracts offered on their lands under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, or IGRA. A unanimous appellate panel held that the tribes were likely to succeed on their claim that the contracts constituted unauthorized Class III gaming.

Class III is IGRA’s category covering forms of gaming beyond its more limited Class I and Class II categories. In this case, the court treated Kalshi’s sports contracts as acts of placing a bet or wager.

The panel also rejected the argument that the relevant gaming activity occurred only where the exchange operated. A customer buying a contract while physically on tribal land was participating in gaming there.

That location analysis has practical consequences for the dispute. Under the panel’s preliminary-injunction analysis, federal registration does not place every transaction outside the gaming rules governing the customer’s physical location.

September’s decision was not itself the injunction

The procedural sequence is important.

Corley originally denied preliminary relief. The Ninth Circuit reversed in part, finding that the tribes had established a likelihood of success under IGRA, and sent the case back to consider the remaining injunction factors. It did not simply issue the district court’s geographic restriction itself.

Wallach emphasized that distinction at the time: the appellate ruling did not yet require Kalshi to stop offering contracts on the lands because the district court still had to address irreparable harm, the balance of equities and the public interest.

The new district-court order supplies the preliminary relief that remained to be decided after that remand.

The tribes did not prevail on every theory. The Ninth Circuit upheld the rejection of their Lanham Act claim based on statements about the contracts’ legality. That advertising-law issue is separate from the IGRA basis for the injunction.

A different legal route from state gambling cases

The tribal case overlaps with the national prediction-market fight but does not present exactly the same question.

In state enforcement cases, Kalshi argues that the Commodity Exchange Act and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s jurisdiction prevent states from applying their gambling laws to its contracts.

Here, the tribes are invoking another federal statute: IGRA. Their argument concerns unauthorized gaming on Indian lands and the operation of their federally recognized gaming regimes.

The Ninth Circuit held that Kalshi need not be a signatory to a tribe’s compact or governing procedures to violate restrictions on unauthorized gaming. The relevant cause of action targets the gaming activity, not only parties that signed an agreement.

That gives other tribes a potentially important precedent, but not an automatic injunction. A separate plaintiff would still need to establish its own entitlement to relief and the relevant geographic and legal facts.

Another setback while Supreme Court petitions remain pending

The tribal injunction arrives alongside other adverse developments for Kalshi.

On Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit denied panel rehearing and rehearing en banc in the separate Nevada case. No judge requested an en banc vote, leaving the August decision against Kalshi’s request for preliminary protection intact. That was not a rehearing ruling in the tribal case.

A day earlier, the Second Circuit denied injunctions pending appeal in Kalshi’s New York and Connecticut cases and Coinbase’s Connecticut case. Those appeals continue without a final appellate merits ruling.

The national picture remains divided. The Third Circuit sided with Kalshi in New Jersey, and petitions asking the Supreme Court to address the jurisdictional dispute remain pending. The justices have not agreed to hear them.

For the California tribes, however, the immediate development is more concrete than a possible future U.S. Supreme Court answer: they now have a preliminary order restricting Kalshi sports contracts on their lands.