Is Robinhood legal in Connecticut?

The order is a two-page letter dated December 2, 2025, Case No. 2025-336, sent by certified mail and email to Robinhood Derivatives, LLC in Menlo Park, California, and signed by the department's director of gaming. Robinhood Derivatives is the CFTC-registered futures commission merchant through which Robinhood offers event contracts.

The department states its finding in the first paragraph: that Robinhood "is conducting unlicensed online gambling, more specifically sports wagering, in Connecticut through its online sports event contracts," in violation of Conn. Gen. Stat. §§ 53-278b and 53-278d and the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (p.1). Its reasoning is that a user buys a contract on a team winning a game, division or championship and is paid on the result, which the department says meets the state's definition of sports wagering in § 12-850(34). On page 2 it adds four points: Public Act 21-23 allowed online sports betting only for licensed operators, and Robinhood holds no online gaming operator's license under § 12-857; Robinhood lets people under 21 trade; it allows wagers on Connecticut college teams; and the contracts are void under § 52-553, the wagering-contract statute.

The letter gives the instruction twice. Page 1 orders Robinhood "to immediately cease and desist advertising and offering its Contracts to Connecticut residents." Page 2 adds "promoting, or otherwise making available" and "any other form of unlicensed online gambling": Robinhood is ordered to stop "advertising, offering, promoting, or otherwise making available Contracts or any other form of unlicensed online gambling to Connecticut residents," must still let residents withdraw funds, and may face civil penalties under the trade practices act or criminal penalties under the gambling statutes if it does not comply.

That is an agency order, not a court judgment. We found no court order that enforces it, stays it or sets it aside, and no penalty the department has imposed under it. Robinhood has not answered the order directly in any filing we read.

We could not tell from the public documents. On September 10, 2026 the governor's office announced that the department had issued cease-and-desist orders "this week" to nine prediction markets, and Robinhood is fourth on its list. The release says all nine must stop offering "sports event contracts" or any other unlicensed online gambling to residents. It does not say whether Robinhood received a fresh letter or whether the release counts the December 2025 one.

On withdrawals, the release, which lists nine platforms, says: "DCP also ordered all three platforms to allow Connecticut residents to withdraw any funds currently held by the platforms." It does not name the three. The attorney general's August 26, 2026 release contains the same sentence, there describing the December 2025 orders to Kalshi "and two other sites." We have not seen any September letter addressed to Robinhood; the governor's release says copies are available on request through the department's GovQA portal.

On April 2, 2026 the United States and the CFTC filed a complaint in federal court in Connecticut, No. 3:26-cv-00498, against the state, Governor Ned Lamont, Attorney General William Tong, Commissioner Bryan T. Cafferelli, the department's Gaming Division and its director, the four officials in their official capacities. It says it was brought "in response to Defendants' sending of cease and desist letters to various CFTC-regulated entities" (¶1), and it names the December 2, 2025 letters to two exchanges, KalshiEx and Crypto.com, and to "one registered FCM: Robinhood Derivatives LLC" (¶60, p.18). It says Robinhood was designated a futures commission merchant on November 23, 2010 and "offers event contract swaps in partnership with DCMs" (¶24).

The CFTC's position is that "the CEA prohibits States from invading the CFTC's exclusive jurisdiction over event contract transactions offered by and executed on federally regulated DCMs" (¶8). Its three counts challenge the statutes defining sports gambling, § 53-278b and § 12-857, each "as applied to transactions on CFTC designated contract markets," and it asks for a declaration and a permanent injunction in the same terms (p.26). No count or request names futures commission merchants, the category in which ¶24 and ¶60 place Robinhood, and the complaint asks for no relief for Robinhood itself.

Connecticut's position, in the attorney general's August 26 release, is that the CFTC is "recycling Kalshi's legal theories," and the release says the state has moved to dismiss. We have not read that motion.

Not in any order we found. Robinhood's quarterly report for the period ended June 30, 2026, filed with the SEC on July 30, says: "In June 2026, RHD filed an unopposed motion to intervene as a plaintiff in the CFTC's action in Connecticut, which remains pending." RHD is Robinhood Derivatives. "Unopposed" is Robinhood's description.

We found no ruling on that motion. We have not read the motion itself, and the public docket index we rely on can lag the court's own system, so a ruling could exist that we have not seen. Until the court grants it, Robinhood is not a party.

Indirectly. Robinhood's help center says its event contracts come through four exchanges, KalshiEX among them, so the rulings about Kalshi's contracts in Connecticut concern products Robinhood also offers. On August 10, 2026 Judge Vernon D. Oliver denied a preliminary injunction to Coinbase, which, like Robinhood, is a futures commission merchant offering Kalshi's contracts. He found Coinbase had not shown it was likely to establish that Kalshi's sports-event contracts "offered through Coinbase" are swaps, or that federal law preempts Connecticut's gambling laws as applied to them (ECF 93, p.4). A footnote records that Coinbase pointed to "a similar cease-and-desist letter issued by the DCP to Robinhood" (p.3, n.4). Robinhood is not a party to that case.

Both companies have appealed to the Second Circuit, and the state has also sued Kalshi; Kalshi in Connecticut and Coinbase in Connecticut follow those cases. Robinhood's own preemption question is before the Supreme Court in a Nevada case, not a Connecticut one: Robinhood Derivatives v. Dreitzer, No. 26-338, its petition from the Ninth Circuit filed September 10, 2026, which the Supreme Court page tracks.

We could not determine it. Robinhood's event contract restrictions page, read October 24, 2026, says Maryland residents cannot trade event contracts and Nevada residents cannot open new sports contracts. It does not mention Connecticut.

The December 2025 order is the only document we found that addresses customer money, and it requires Robinhood to let every Connecticut resident withdraw funds it holds. No order or filing we found deals with open positions or deposits. Robinhood's status in other states is on the Robinhood legal page.

The department's order and the CFTC's suit decide who may license and police these contracts in Connecticut, and a state gambling ruling is not a ruling on federal tax, on which the IRS has issued no guidance for event contracts. Of the people we've seen file, the three most common ways are gambling income, capital gains on Form 8949 and Section 1256 on Form 6781, and Robinhood event contracts taxes shows how each applies to a Robinhood year.