Developing A Louisiana Judge Shut Ten Prediction Markets Out of the State at 3:48 p.m. Without Hearing From One of Them. The Order Runs Out Eight Days Before Anyone Gets to Argue.

Editor's note: TrueEdge Wire's owner also builds odds tools, including a paid add-on that shows exchange prices from Kalshi, Polymarket, Novig and ProphetX, and earns affiliate commissions from sportsbooks and from ProphetX. All four are defendants here. We have argued in this space against criminalising federally licensed exchanges. Weigh what follows accordingly.

At 3:48 p.m. on Thursday, a few hours after Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill filed her petition, Judge Jeffrey Johnson of the 21st Judicial District Court in Tangipahoa Parish signed a temporary restraining order against the prediction-market industry. He did it ex parte, which means no defendant was heard. UPI quotes the order: "The equities and the public interest overwhelmingly warrant immediate relief."

Yesterday we wrote that the suit was legitimate and the demand for an immediate order was the questionable part, and we named what would change our mind: a prompt hearing with both sides in the room. Louisiana got the opposite. This piece is about what the order says, and about a calendar that does not add up.

What the order does

We have not read the order itself. No outlet we found has posted it, and everything here is from reports that quote or describe it.

Those reports agree on the core. The defendants may not offer, list, accept, clear, settle, broker or make markets in "event contracts" for anyone in Louisiana without a state gaming licence. CDC Gaming says Johnson defined an event contract as "also known as a wager." The companies must geofence the state. They may not tell Louisiana customers their products are "lawful, licensed, or authorized." Bitcoin.com News reports that the judge required no bond and no notice, on the reasoning that the defendants "immediately received constructive notice of the Petition through media and other outlets," and that the order also binds anyone in "active concert or participation" who knows about it.

That last clause is the widest part. Gaming lawyer Daniel Wallach, quoted by CDC Gaming, read it to mean trading firms that quote prices on these exchanges could face enforcement without being named. He also called Louisiana the "first state to sue virtually the entire industry in one action and first to secure a TRO on the filing date."

Yesterday we could not settle the defendant count, and now we can explain why. The Shreveport-Bossier Journal reports 31 corporate entities across 10 parent operators; UPI says 30. The ten parents are Kalshi, Polymarket US, Robinhood, Coinbase, Crypto.com, Gemini, ForecastEx, Novig, Underdog and ProphetX. WBRZ's list adds North American Derivatives Exchange and IG Group Holdings, which may be affiliates counted separately. We do not know which.

Two dates that do not meet

The order lasts ten days. UPI gives the expiry as November 22, a Sunday. The hearing on a preliminary injunction is set for 9 a.m. on Monday, November 30.

That leaves eight days in which the order has lapsed and nothing has replaced it, unless the judge extends it or the defendants agree to a longer term, the two exits DeFi Rate says the order itself provides. We expect an extension. If it comes, ten companies will have been shut out of a state for eighteen days on one side's papers. A restraining order is meant to hold things still for the few days it takes to convene a hearing. This one is on course to do the work of an injunction before the injunction is argued.

The "constructive notice" line deserves a second look as well. Kalshi has been in federal litigation against Murrill since October 23. Polymarket US sued her four days after that. The state knew precisely which lawyers to call, and Kalshi's own federal motion on Thursday says the two sides had held "recent discussions." News coverage is a strange substitute for a phone call between people already suing each other.

The order tells exchanges to do what their regulator just told them to stop doing

On November 5 the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued an interpretation of its impartial-access rule. It says exchanges "must cease domestic geographic restrictions that violate the Impartial Access Requirements within 30 days," or explain to the agency why they cannot. Chairman Michael Selig: "Geographic access restrictions are inconsistent with those purposes and the Act's impartial access requirements."

Thirty days from November 5 is December 5. The Louisiana order requiring a geofence was signed on November 12. For the designated contract markets among the defendants, one government has now ordered a wall around Louisiana and another has put a deadline on taking such walls down.

We are not neutral on who should win that argument, and we are also not sure the CFTC's deadline was issued in good faith as market regulation. It reads to us like a litigation position written as a rule. But a company cannot obey both, and a court that issues the second command without hearing about the first has not been shown the whole problem.

What Kalshi did next

It did not go quietly, and by one account it did not go at all. WWNO reported that on Friday morning Louisiana users opening the app saw a banner leading to a screen that read, "Your government says you can't use Kalshi anymore," and said the state had ended access "without a hearing, notice or due process." A button linked to a petition. The same report says those users still appeared able to buy contracts. The Advocate, as relayed by Bitcoin.com News, saw the same thing at 7 p.m. Thursday.

We cannot tell you whether that was lag or a decision. It matters. A company that keeps trading in the face of a court order because it thinks the order is preempted is taking a risk a company should not take with a state judge, whatever the merits. Kalshi's federal complaint, as described by Bitcoin.com News, says Louisiana's gambling-by-computer law carries fines of up to $100,000 and up to five years in prison. Kalshi's head of litigation, Jovy Dedaj, posted that "the operation of federally-regulated exchanges is the exclusive province of the federal government. Full stop." That is an argument for a judge. It is not a licence to treat an order as optional while one is found.

The federal judge who could say so has not spoken. Kalshi's motion, Document 23 before Judge Jerry Edwards Jr. in the Western District, asks him to restrain state officials "from pursuing any state action." It is written as though the state had not yet filed. No ruling had appeared by Friday morning.

The best case for what Johnson did

It is better than the industry's statements allow. Louisiana's Gaming Control Board said in December 2025 that it regards sports event contracts as illegal gambling. The companies kept selling them for eleven months. WBRZ reports the petition lists Kalshi markets on college football championships, Senate control and the next White House press secretary, under the line that "virtually anything can become a wager." If a state judge believes unlicensed gambling is being sold to residents every hour, stopping it first and hearing argument second is what restraining orders exist for. Johnson limited it to ten days. Federal judges have issued temporary restraining orders in the exchanges' favour too, and we did not complain. And Tuesday's ruling in Manhattan, that Novig's contracts "are sports betting," gives a state court respectable company on the merits.

Our answer is about the emergency, not the merits. Eleven months of open operation is the state's best evidence of harm and its worst evidence of urgency. Nothing happened on November 12 that had not been happening on November 11. The order reaches market makers who were never served and bars companies from stating a legal position that one federal appeals court has adopted. It was signed by a judge who, on the reports we have, heard nothing about a federal instruction pointing the other way.

What would settle it

Three things, all checkable. If Johnson moves the hearing inside the ten days, the gap closes and the speed objection weakens. If Edwards rules on Document 23, we learn whether a federal court thinks it can still reach a state case that is already pending. And if the order is posted and turns out to address the CFTC's November 5 interpretation, we were wrong to say the judge was not shown it. The CFTC has now sued eleven states; as of the complaint it filed against Arkansas on Thursday, Louisiana was not one of them.

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