A court in the state of Washington has ordered Kalshi to halt all operations within the state, following a supposed violation of the state’s Gambling and Consumer Protection Act. 

 

Based on a memo from the office of the Washington Attorney General, Kalshi is thereby required to immediately stop the offering, accepting, and facilitating wagers on sports, elections, politics, entertainment, tech and science within the state. 

 

“Kalshi has gotten rich promoting wagers on sports, elections, natural disasters, events related to the Iran War, and more. Under this order, Kalshi is banned from offering wagers on most of those topics in Washington,” said Attorney General Nick Brown.

 

“As this case moves forward, we will continue to enforce Washington law and hold Kalshi accountable for misleading consumers.”

 

The court has also mandated Kalshi implement an IP address and residency based geofence by August 19 and a multi-source geofencing solution by Sept. 2. 

 

According to the Washington State Law, Gambling refers to any activity that involves the staking of or risking something valuable upon the outcome of a contest of chance or any future or contingent event, and going by this, all Kalshi activities completely violate the state’s law. 

 

As part of its restrictive orders, the court has also banned Kalshi from advertising any sort of wagers to Washington residents, as doing so, the attorney general memo said, constitutes an unfair or deceptive act or practice.

 

The halt order from the Washington court also comes at a time when Baltimore, the largest city in the state of Maryland also sued Kalshi, Polymarket, for violating the state’s Consumer Protection Ordinance by offering unlicensed sport contracts while also naming Coinbase, Robinhood, and Webull as defendants in the lawsuit.