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New Mexico remains one of the few states that allow sports betting, but only in person, and one state legislator is now lobbying the tribal community to change that. During a recent Indian Affairs Committee meeting, Rep. John Block, R-Otero, asked tribal leaders to reexamine existing gaming compacts with the state in a push to legalize online sports betting.
New Mexico was an early adopter of legal sports betting
After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal sports betting ban in Murphy v. NCAA in 2018, New Mexico became the fifth state to legalize sports betting, doing so through compacts with its tribal nations.
Under those compacts, all sports bets must be placed in person at tribal casinos, giving tribes exclusive rights to wagering within state lines. Block wants tribes to reopen their compacts to allow online betting, arguing it would grow the state’s betting market and help New Mexico keep pace with neighboring states that already offer mobile wagering.
Because the compacts were negotiated jointly by the state and tribal governments, adding online betting would require renegotiating the agreements currently in place.
Block has argued that New Mexico is losing significant tax revenue by not legalizing online sports betting, telling Source NM via Legal Sports Report news:
“It would be really nice, at least, to get some more revenue for people, because if people are already here operating in the state illegally online, then that robs you, it robs us, it robs every single New Mexican of that tax revenue.”
New Mexico’s legal fight with Kalshi
Block’s push comes as the state is locked in a legal battle over prediction markets. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Kalshi on June 4, accusing the prediction market platform of offering unlicensed online sports betting in violation of the state’s Gaming Control Act. Torrez has said Kalshi’s sports-related contracts “look like a sportsbook, act like a sportsbook.”
The state’s lawsuit also alleges Kalshi allows users as young as 18 to trade sports contracts, even though New Mexico law sets the minimum gambling age at 21.
Days before the state’s lawsuit, the Pojoaque, Sandia and Isleta pueblos and the Mescalero Apache Tribe filed their own federal suit against Kalshi, arguing the platform violates their gaming compacts and the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act by offering sports wagering on tribal lands without geofencing them out.
CFTC sues New Mexico over prediction market jurisdiction
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates prediction markets at the federal level, sued New Mexico on June 12, naming Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, Torrez and members of the state Gaming Control Board as defendants.
The agency is seeking a declaratory judgment that federal law gives it exclusive authority over event contracts, along with a permanent injunction blocking New Mexico from enforcing state gaming laws against Kalshi and other CFTC-regulated platforms.
“New Mexico is the latest state seeking to nullify black letter law and decades of judicial precedent by imposing state gaming laws on federally regulated derivatives exchanges subject to the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction,” CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said in a CFTC statement announcing the suit.
New Mexico is the eighth state the CFTC has sued in this dispute, following similar actions against Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, Wisconsin and others. Notably, every state the CFTC has sued so far has a Democratic governor.
The dispute leaves New Mexico fighting on two fronts: pushing to expand its own sports betting framework while also defending its authority to regulate Kalshi against a federal agency that says state gaming law doesn’t apply.
