Is Robinhood legal in New Jersey?

We have not read the letter. It is Exhibit 1 to the complaint filed by Robinhood Derivatives, the Robinhood company that offers event contracts, and we read the complaint without its exhibits (complaint, ¶2, p.1). In Robinhood's telling, the Division sent it and Kalshi cease-and-desist letters on March 27, 2025, from its Atlantic City office, and Robinhood's was "nearly identical" to Kalshi's (¶34, p.12).

The complaint says the letter asserted violations of the New Jersey Sports Wagering Act and of the state constitution's limit on wagering on college sports, and demanded that Robinhood "immediately cease and desist from offering any form of sports wagering to New Jersey residents and void any such wagers already placed" (¶34, pp.12-13). It set a deadline of 11:59 p.m. on March 28, 2025, warning of "further enforcement actions" otherwise (p.13). Robinhood points out that a violation of the Sports Wagering Act can be charged as a fourth-degree crime or fined up to $100,000.

Robinhood says it complied first and sued later. On the day the letter arrived, it put accounts with a New Jersey address on a "position closing only" restriction, which stopped them from opening new sports-related positions, and it wrote to the Division the next day that it did not believe it had broken any state law (¶¶3, 36, p.13).

A month later the federal court in New Jersey granted Kalshi a preliminary injunction against the Division. Robinhood says that in May it asked the Division to let it resume sports trading through Kalshi's exchange while that order stood, and that the Division's officials said they could not agree to refrain from enforcement (¶37, pp.13-14). Robinhood restored its New Jersey customers' access to sports contracts and, on August 19, 2025, sued the Division, its interim director and the attorney general (Robinhood Derivatives v. Flaherty, No. 1:25-cv-14723) (¶6, p.3). It told the court it had "over 48,000 customers in New Jersey" (¶58, p.23).

The suit asks for an injunction barring enforcement of the Sports Wagering Act's licensing section, the constitutional provision and any other New Jersey law that would regulate Robinhood's part in event contracts traded on a designated contract market, and a declaration that doing so violates the Supremacy Clause (pp.26-27). Robinhood's argument is that its customers' orders execute on Kalshi's CFTC-designated exchange, so the same preemption ruling that protects Kalshi should cover the futures commission merchant that routes the orders (¶¶21-22, p.7; ¶57, p.23).

The court's orders in Robinhood's case are not in anything we could read. The one description we have is Robinhood's, in its quarterly report for the period ending June 30, 2026: "New Jersey agreed to a preliminary injunction pending the outcome of its appeal in the Third Circuit of the grant of a preliminary injunction in a similar case brought by KalshiEx LLC." The report adds that the Third Circuit ruled for Kalshi in April 2026, that "the court extended the preliminary injunction," and that the parties are to file a joint letter once New Jersey petitions the Supreme Court or its deadline to do so passes.

New Jersey filed that petition on September 2, 2026. We could not read the district court's docket for this check, so we cannot say what the joint letter proposed, whether the court has entered a further order, or what any extension's terms are. We could not determine whether the injunction the report describes remains in force today.

Kalshi received its own letter the same day and went straight to court. On April 28, 2025, Judge Edward S. Kiel granted Kalshi's motion for a preliminary injunction (opinion, p.16), and on April 6, 2026 the Third Circuit affirmed (No. 25-1922), holding that Kalshi had shown a reasonable chance of success on its argument that the Commodity Exchange Act preempts the state's law (p.2). New Jersey's petition notes the ruling came "by a 2-1 vote."

Robinhood's injunction, as its report describes it, was agreed to "pending the outcome" of that appeal. The full ruling and the dissent are covered in is Kalshi legal in New Jersey?.

New Jersey's petition in Flaherty v. KalshiEX, No. 26-299, asks "Whether the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act preempted States from regulating sports bets that occur within their jurisdictions if those bets are offered on markets registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission" (p. i). Its position opens the petition: "For more than a century, the States have been the primary regulators of gambling in this country" (p.1). The docket shows Kalshi's response due November 9, 2026, after an extension from October 8.

Robinhood is not a party to No. 26-299. Its own petition, No. 26-338, comes from its Nevada case and counts the New Jersey suit among the five lawsuits it says it has brought (p.22 n.11). It says that "if the Court grants New Jersey's petition, it should grant this petition as well" (p.16). Nevada's response to it is due November 13, 2026. Kalshi Supreme Court tracker follows both.

We found no New Jersey enforcement action against Robinhood after the March 2025 letter. Robinhood's 10-Q describes a private putative class action filed April 22, 2026 in the Northern District of California, by plaintiffs it calls purported Robinhood customers, alleging among other things that its sports-related event contracts violate New Jersey's Statute of Anne and Consumer Fraud Act. The report says it was consolidated with three later suits and that Robinhood has moved to compel most plaintiffs to arbitration. We have not read those complaints, and they are not actions by the state.

Two New Jersey bills on prediction markets are covered on the Kalshi New Jersey page linked above; we have not tied either one to Robinhood.

We found no order that stops Robinhood's event contracts in New Jersey. Robinhood's restrictions page, read on October 27, 2026, lists limits for Maryland and Nevada residents, and its overview adds Michigan; neither names New Jersey. Robinhood's complaint says it restored New Jersey access to sports contracts before suing in August 2025 (¶6, p.3). No order or filing we read addresses withdrawals, deposits or open positions for New Jersey customers. Every other state is on the Robinhood legal page.

The suit is about who regulates sports-related event contracts, and a state gaming ruling or agreement is not a ruling on how they are taxed. How a Robinhood event contracts year is reported is covered in Robinhood event contracts taxes.