The list of governments trying to rein in prediction markets keeps growing, and it now includes a city. On August 13, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and the City Council filed consumer-protection actions in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City against Kalshi and Polymarket, alleging the platforms are running illegal, unlicensed sports-betting operations. The details here come from the city's announcement and reporting by NBC Sports, Courthouse News, and others.
Baltimore's core argument is the same one now echoing through courts across the country: that these "event contracts" are sports bets in everything but name. The platforms let residents wager on game winners, point spreads, totals, and player props, the same markets a licensed sportsbook offers, which the city says makes them unlawful gambling under Maryland law. The complaint frames the harm in competitive and consumer terms, alleging the companies are able to "compete with regulated sportsbooks while avoiding the oversight, taxation, responsible-gambling requirements" that licensed operators must follow.
What is new here
Two things make this filing notable. First, it is a city, not a state attorney general, using a local consumer-protection ordinance rather than a gambling statute, a different legal tool aimed at the same target. Second, the net is wide: beyond Kalshi and Polymarket, the complaint names Robinhood, Webull, and Coinbase entities, reflecting how many brokerages and exchanges now offer sports event contracts. Baltimore also alleges the companies misled consumers about the legality and regulatory status of their products, which is the heart of a consumer-protection claim.
It does not come out of nowhere in Maryland. State regulators had already issued a cease-and-desist order to Kalshi over sports wagering in 2025, which Kalshi is appealing. The city action stacks a municipal claim on top of that existing state pressure.
A pile of cases heading for the Supreme Court
Baltimore's suit is, by various counts, the 20th-plus legal action against prediction markets around the country, and it lands days after a federal judge in Connecticut ruled that Kalshi's sports contracts are wagers, not federally regulated swaps. That ruling deepened a conflict with an earlier Third Circuit decision that sided with the platforms, the kind of split that tends to force the Supreme Court to step in. In other words, the ground under prediction markets is getting less settled, not more, even as the businesses grow.
And they are growing fast, which is exactly why the fight is escalating. Prediction markets operate nationwide at a minimum age of 18, versus 21 at licensed sportsbooks, and both DraftKings and FanDuel are pivoting into the space to reach customers in states that have not legalized sports betting. The more mainstream these products become, the more governments like Baltimore argue they should carry the same consumer protections and taxes as the sportsbooks they resemble.
Our take
The significance here is less any single lawsuit than the widening of the front. When cities start filing alongside states, and when the defendant list expands from the pure-play prediction markets to mainstream brokerages like Robinhood and Coinbase, it signals that the "these are federally regulated financial products, local law cannot touch us" position is being tested from every direction at once. Baltimore choosing a consumer-protection ordinance is a tell: it reframes the issue from a jurisdictional turf war into a straightforward question of whether consumers are being sold gambling dressed up as trading.
For bettors, the consumer-protection point is the one worth sitting with, minus the moralizing. A licensed sportsbook in a legal state comes with age verification at 21, deposit and self-exclusion tools, and state oversight; a prediction-market contract available nationwide at 18 does not carry all of that, and its legality may soon turn on a Supreme Court ruling. That gap is precisely what Baltimore and a growing list of governments are targeting, and it is why we keep flagging that these products sit on different, still-contested footing than the sportsbook. We have tracked this from the Connecticut ruling to the South Carolina case, and Baltimore is the newest, and most local, escalation yet.