Everyone and Their Brief: SCOTUS Gets a Prediction Market Love Letter 👇

Former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, former CFTC and SEC Chair Gary Gensler, the National Football League, 39 states plus the District of Columbia, and 145 tribal nations are among the parties that filed amicus briefs last week urging the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on whether sports-based prediction market contracts qualify as swaps under federal law, according to CoinDesk's State of Crypto newsletter published Oct. 11, 2026.

The case centers on a circuit split: two appellate courts have ruled that prediction markets touching sports are gambling products to be regulated by states, while one appellate court has ruled the matter falls under CFTC jurisdiction. Most of the amicus filings backed that state-level view. Dodd, whose name is on the 2010 Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act at the heart of the dispute, argued in his brief that the law was not intended to give the CFTC authority to override state governments' power to regulate gambling. The brief also pushed back on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals panel that ruled 2-1 that the CFTC has jurisdiction over swaps and prediction markets covering sports, saying there is a distinction between derivatives as financial instruments and sports wagers.

The filing cited parlays as an example, stating: "Parlays that chain together multiple wagers — often on point spreads or player performances in different games, in different cities, in different sports — do not facilitate hedging or price discovery," and are not "associated with" the kind of underlying markets Congress intended to regulate.

On Friday, the CFTC released two proposals on the matter, one of which is now in effect as an interim final rule. The newsletter did not indicate whether the Supreme Court has signaled it will take up the case.