A federal judge has halted Minnesota's ban on prediction market platforms, days before it was supposed to go into effect.
A federal judge ruled that federal law pre-empts the ban, adding it would cause irreparable harm if it took effect. The decision was made following a joint legal challenge from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and major prediction platforms Kalshi and Polymarket.
The case now returns to court for a deeper examination, before a permanent ruling is determined.
Republican State Senator Jordan Rasmusson, and DFL State Senator John Marty were proponents of the bipartisan bill this past legislative session and Rasmusson told Vineeta Sawkar on the WCCO Morning News that he expects the issue to make it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"But I think it was still good for Minnesota this session to put our marker down and say that we believe that we should be able to protect Minnesota consumers from the fraud and insider trading that we've seen in these prediction markets," Rasmusson explains. "And that Minnesotans are concerned about putting a casino effectively in everyone's pocket."
That law was set to take effect statewide on Saturday, Aug. 1.
"It's telling that the lawsuit was not just brought by the corporations who are profiting from this, predatory corporations, it was brought by both them and the regulators at the federal level who are supposed to protect Americans from them, but who have been working with them and done nothing to regulate them," added Marty.
