SCOTUS Publishes First Orders List — No Prediction Market Cases Granted Yet
The Supreme Court published its first orders list of the October 2026-2027 term on October 2, granting certiorari in three cases — none of them prediction market cases. The absence was expected: response briefs from Kalshi to the New Jersey petition (filed September 2) and the Robinhood petition (filed September 9) are still pending. The Court typically considers cert petitions a few weeks after all responses are received. Legal observers expect the prediction market cert decision to come in late October or November 2026.
The Supreme Court of the United States published its first orders list of the new October 2026-2027 term on October 2, granting certiorari in three cases. No prediction market case was among them. The absence was not unexpected: the Court generally does not act on cert petitions before all responses have been filed, and Kalshi's response briefs to both the New Jersey petition (Third Circuit, filed September 2) and the Robinhood petition (Ninth Circuit, filed September 9) are still being prepared. Under standard Supreme Court procedures, Kalshi has 30 days from when each petition was docketed to file a response — deadlines that may fall in early to mid-October. Once responses are in, the Court adds the petitions to a conference, typically a few weeks after the filing deadline. Under this timeline, the prediction market cert decision is most likely to come at a late October or November conference.
The procedural status as of October 2: three petitions are pending — New Jersey (Third Circuit, for Kalshi on preemption), Robinhood (Ninth Circuit, against Kalshi on preemption), and a potential third from Crypto.com (which also filed a cert petition from the same Ninth Circuit ruling as Robinhood). Kalshi's own en banc petition at the Ninth Circuit is also pending; if the Ninth Circuit grants en banc review, Robinhood's and Crypto.com's cert petitions would lose their underlying judgment and would need to be withdrawn or refiled after the en banc process. The September 28 long conference — the Court's first opportunity to act on the petitions — passed without a cert grant, but that conference was almost certainly limited to cases where all papers were already in. The prediction market petitions were almost certainly not ready for conference on September 28.
The circuit split that makes cert likely is now wider than at any previous point. At the long conference, only the Third-Ninth split existed; by the time the Court conferences the prediction market petitions in late October or November, the Sixth Circuit's September 25 ruling against Kalshi will also be in the record. Three circuits have now examined the CEA preemption question and produced two distinct answers. Legal commentators had placed cert grant probability at 60-70% based on the two-circuit split; the Sixth Circuit's ruling is likely to raise that estimate. Polymarket's prediction market contract tracking SCOTUS cert grant by year end has been active; the probability on that market was approximately 46% before the Sixth Circuit ruling and has not been widely updated in published sources since.
The practical implications of waiting for a cert decision extend beyond the legal calendar. Kalshi's $40 billion fundraising round — announced September 30 — is closing against the background of this cert timeline. The margin trading application filed with the CFTC on September 22 has a 45-day review window that runs to approximately November 5. Missouri's 30-day C&D compliance window expires October 18. The FOMC meets October 28-29. The midterm elections are November 3. And the cert decision will come somewhere in the October-November window. The prediction market sector is in its most compressed regulatory and commercial calendar of 2026: legal, financial, political, and product developments are converging in a six-week period that will define the sector's trajectory into 2027.
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