- CNIGA’s letter asks the Senate to bar federally designated commodity markets from listing sports and casino-style event contracts.
- California voters rejected sports betting twice in 2022, yet Kalshi, a federally regulated exchange, still sells sports contracts to residents.
- Three California tribes have a related appeal against Kalshi pending at the 9th Circuit, argued in July and still undecided.
- The Senate needs 60 votes to advance the bill, and Republicans hold 53 seats.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – California’s tribal casino operators have told Senate leaders the CLARITY Act should stay off the floor unless it bans sports and casino-style prediction contracts and shields tribal gaming law from federal commodities law. The California Nations Indian Gaming Association put the demand in a Sept. 9 letter from Chairman James Siva to Majority Leader John Thune and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, five days before the Senate returned from recess for Tuesday’s cloture vote on the bill.
The Letter’s Three Demands
Siva’s Sept. 9 letter sets three conditions. The first is a listing ban, language that “prohibits the listing of event contracts involving sports wagering, athletic competitions, player performance, casino-style gaming, or other activities traditionally regulated under federal, state, or Tribal gaming laws” on designated contract markets.
The second is a savings clause stating that nothing in the act “preempts, limits, weakens, supersedes, or otherwise affects” the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, tribal-state compacts, state gaming laws or tribal gaming laws. The third would stop the bill’s digital-asset, decentralized-finance, exchange, software and protocol provisions from serving, in the letter’s words, “as a backdoor for nationwide mobile gambling.”
“Congress built a carefully negotiated federal, state, and Tribal framework for gaming. Prediction market companies want none of that. But just because you’re well funded, it doesn’t mean the rules don’t apply,” Siva wrote. “The Senate should not advance the CLARITY Act unless it explicitly preserves Tribal sovereignty and prevents federal commodities law from being used to bypass state and Tribal gaming laws.”
The demand is not new. An Aug. 5 story on this site reported the CLARITY Act nearing the Senate recess with no tribal carve-out. The letter is the tribes’ most direct appeal since then.
California Has No Legal Market To Protect
Unlike most states pushing back on the bill, California has no legal sports betting to defend. Voters rejected both 2022 ballot measures. In-person tribal wagering under Proposition 26 lost 7,129,127 votes to 3,514,597 (67.0%-33.0%), and online wagering under Proposition 27 lost 8,849,206 to 1,906,342 (82.3%-17.7%), according to the Secretary of State’s certified count.
Sports betting remains illegal in the state even as Kalshi, an exchange regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission rather than any state gaming agency, sells event contracts tied to the NFL, college football and other sports to California residents. That is the structure CNIGA’s letter targets, and the reason the tribes are fighting prediction markets in court and in Congress at once.
Whatever the Senate does, the rules for gambling in California are now being set on a federal calendar the state does not control.
The 9th Circuit Already Has The Same Question
The court fight began in the Northern District of California, where three tribes with reservations in the state, Blue Lake Rancheria, Chicken Ranch Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians and Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians, allege Kalshi’s sports contracts put unlicensed Class III gaming on their lands, a category the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act permits on Indian lands only under a tribal-state compact.
On Nov. 10, 2025, U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley refused them a preliminary injunction because, in the order’s words, they “have not shown a likelihood of success on the merits” of either claim.
The tribes appealed, and a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel that heard argument July 10 in Blue Lake Rancheria v. Kalshi, No. 25-7504, has not ruled. Its decision could settle by case law the same question CNIGA is asking Congress to settle by statute, which is why a carve-out written into the CLARITY Act would matter beyond this one bill.
What Happens Next
Cloture on the motion to proceed to the CLARITY Act requires 60 votes. Republicans hold 53 Senate seats, so at least seven Democrats or independents must cross over even if every Republican votes yes.
A failed cloture vote keeps the bill off the floor for now. A successful one opens it to amendments, including any language addressing CNIGA’s demands. The 9th Circuit panel has given no timeline for its ruling in Blue Lake Rancheria v. Kalshi, which remains pending regardless of what the Senate does Tuesday.