Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott and the Baltimore City Council have filed lawsuits in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City against prediction-market operators Kalshi and Polymarket, along with their financial partners Robinhood, Webull and Coinbase, alleging violations of the city's Consumer Protection Ordinance.
The complaints target the core of what these platforms sell: markets letting users wager on game winners, point spreads, point totals and player statistics — the same menu a licensed sportsbook offers. Kalshi and Polymarket describe these products as “event contracts” or prediction-market trades, but Baltimore's filings argue that framing doesn't change what's actually happening, contending the products function as unlawful sports bets under Maryland law regardless of the label attached to them.
“Running Sportsbooks Without Licenses”
These companies are running sportsbooks without licenses and betting that a new label will put them above the law. It won't. Baltimore will not let multibillion-dollar companies put profits over people and harm our communities through illegal gambling.
That was Mayor Scott's characterization of the suits. Baltimore City Solicitor Ebony M. Thompson echoed the point, saying Kalshi and Polymarket “cannot circumvent Baltimore's consumer protections by repackaging gambling as something else or claiming federal regulation puts them beyond the reach of our laws.”
A National Pattern, Not an Isolated Case
Baltimore is the latest in a growing line of jurisdictions making the same argument. Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman filed a nearly identical suit against Kalshi, Polymarket and their distribution partners, prompting the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to sue Kentucky back within a week to assert federal jurisdiction. Rhode Island's attorney general brought a similar case, and the CFTC countersued there as well. In New York, U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres already declined to block state regulators from enforcing gambling law against Kalshi, ruling the company hadn't shown a likelihood of success on its argument that federal commodities law preempts the state. Ohio's gaming regulator took a different route entirely, fining Kalshi $5 million for allegedly using the “event contract” label to dodge the state's 20% sports-betting tax.
Coinbase, named in Baltimore's suit as a distribution partner, has otherwise been expanding its footprint in regulated markets elsewhere — the exchange's Deribit unit recently won a broker-dealer licence in Dubai to route institutional trades, a reminder that its prediction-market exposure sits alongside a much broader push into licensed venues globally.
Polymarket has pushed back on the city-level approach directly. A company spokesperson said that “city-specific action runs counter to the CFTC's established framework for regulating prediction markets,” arguing federal law governs exchanges registered with the CFTC rather than local ordinances. The CFTC itself maintains that event contracts qualify as swaps within its exclusive jurisdiction — the same claim states and cities keep testing in court.
Related: NYC Council Probes Coinbase, Polymarket, Kalshi Over Ad Tactics
Where This Leaves Bettors
The legal map so far is a patchwork rather than a clean answer. Tennessee's push against Kalshi hit the opposite result from New York's: the CFTC secured a federal injunction blocking the state from enforcing its gambling laws against the platform, and Tennessee has since appealed to the Sixth Circuit for an expedited hearing. Baltimore's case will add another data point to that unsettled record, and given the full text of the city's filing, it appears determined to press the argument through to a ruling rather than settle quietly.
