Washington AG Nick Brown Argues the Case Against Prediction Markets

Washington AG Nick Brown has repeatedly attacked prediction markets, and as recently as last month, he targeted Kalshi, a prediction market platform, in a fresh lawsuit alleging that the company is skirting gambling statutes to offer the same product without the red tape and prerequisite oversight.

Washington Is Still Not Closer to Restricting Kalshi

What will come of this is still a toss-up, with Nevada and New Jersey demonstrating how, when ruling on prediction markets, the results can be diametrically opposed outcomes. In recent interviews, AG Brown has argued his office’s case, seeking to force Kalshi specifically to shutter its operations. 

Commenting for The Gee and Ursula Show, AG Brown had this to say: “I don’t know the origin story of Kalshi. I do know that the president’s son serves on their board, which raises all sorts of issues in and of itself. Now that they’ve expanded it to everything, 

I think part of it is a larger conversation about America and the types of things we’d like to wager on. But my job, first and foremost, is to enforce Washington state law. And this is pretty simple.”

AG Brown maintained that what Kalshi offered, in his office’s view, was gambling, but the platform was not regulated in the state to do so. 

He further added that he was inherently against gambling and that he liked to gamble from time to time himself, but maintained that his office was there to uphold the law, which specifies how gambling ought to be administered. 

Other Prediction Market Platforms Take Notice of Lawsuit

“I understand that, and I respect that, but we as a state have decided to regulate gambling in this way,” he noted. AG Brown dismissed a question that the state was crawling towards a gambling epidemic, and argued that Washington was in a good place, but that laws need to be upheld altogether. 

The recent lawsuit brought against Kalshi, however, has tipped off other prediction market platforms, with Robinhood launching a counter and preemptive lawsuit of its own.