Has Hawaii sent Kalshi a cease-and-desist letter?

No. As of 31 August 2026 there is no cease-and-desist, no lawsuit and no formal opinion from the Hawaii Attorney General or any county prosecutor on record against Kalshi or Polymarket.

Does the Ninth Circuit ruling ban Kalshi in Hawaii?

No. The ruling came out of Nevada’s case and orders nothing in Hawaii. What it does is remove the federal-preemption defence Kalshi would raise if Hawaii ever acted, because Hawaii sits in the Ninth Circuit and the holding binds federal courts here.

Can I bet on sports legally in Hawaii?

There is no state-licensed sportsbook in Hawaii. HB 1308 failed in conference committee in 2025 and did not pass in 2026. Hawaii and Utah are the only two states with no legal gambling of any kind.

Why did HB 2198 fail if it passed the House?

It was referred jointly to two Senate committees and never scheduled for a hearing. The Commerce and Consumer Protection chair has said he supported it and could not get the joint hearing on the calendar. With no Senate companion bill and the introduction deadline passed, it could not be revived this session.

Is Kalshi legal in Hawaii?

Explainer · Updated August 31, 2026 · 18+ · Not legal advice · By BetG8 Editorial · Prediction Markets

Hawaii bans every form of gambling. No casino, no tribal casino, no lottery, no charitable bingo, no horse racing, no sportsbook. It shares that distinction with exactly one other state, Utah. And yet a Hawaii resident with a phone can open Kalshi or Polymarket this morning and trade a contract on an NFL game, a congressional primary or the timing of a public official’s resignation. Nobody in Honolulu has tried to stop it.

Short answer: Kalshi and Polymarket are both reachable in Hawaii today, and no Hawaii regulator, prosecutor or attorney general has taken any action against either one. A bill that would have classified their contracts as illegal gambling passed the House this year and then died in the Senate without ever getting a hearing. On 28 August 2026 the Ninth Circuit held that states may enforce their gambling laws against sports event contracts, which makes Hawaii’s laws usable against Kalshi for the first time. Usable is not the same as used.

Status at a glance

Question	Hawaii, as of 31 August 2026
Is Kalshi accessible in Hawaii?	Yes. No geofence.
Is Polymarket accessible?	Yes.
Enforcement action on record	None. No cease-and-desist, no lawsuit, no opinion letter.
Legal sportsbook in the state?	No.
Legal casino, lottery or charitable gaming?	No — none of them. Hawaii and Utah are the only two.
Governing statute	Hawaii Revised Statutes ch. 712, part III (gambling offences).
Controlling appellate precedent	Ninth Circuit, decided 28 August 2026. Binding in Hawaii.
Bill to ban prediction markets	HB 2198. Passed the House, died in the Senate without a hearing. Sponsor says he will refile.

The rule Hawaii actually has

Hawaii’s gambling law sits in chapter 712 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes, alongside the other public-order offences. It criminalises gambling and the promotion of gambling, and it does it without the carve-outs that almost every other state carries. There is no lottery act. There is no tribal gaming compact. There is no charitable bingo exemption. The prohibition is the whole framework.

That produces a second-order problem that matters more than the statute itself: Hawaii has no gaming regulator. Nevada has a Gaming Control Board with an enforcement division. Michigan has a Gaming Control Board and an attorney general who has used it. Tennessee has a Sports Wagering Council that issued cease-and-desist letters in January. Hawaii has none of these, because it has never had a legal industry to regulate. Enforcement falls to county prosecutors and county police departments, whose gambling caseload is physical.

Why nothing has happened

The Honolulu Police Department has spent 2026 raiding game rooms. It shut 47 of them in 2025 and 23 in the first seven months of 2026. Captain Clinton Corpuz has been explicit that this is the priority and that the department does not dedicate meaningful resources to working out whether residents are opening gambling apps on their phones. Game rooms attract weapons and drugs; a prediction-market app on a phone in Kailua does not generate a call for service.

So the gap is not ideological. Hawaii is not permissive about gambling — it is the least permissive state in the country. The gap is capacity. The one institution positioned to close it by writing a letter has never written one.

The bill that died without a hearing

House Bill 2198, introduced by Representative Scot Matayoshi of Kaneohe-Maunawili, would have closed the gap directly: it classified prediction-market contracts on sports results, elections and political outcomes, human events, disasters and public-health emergencies, and deaths as gambling, and therefore subject to the chapter 712 prohibition already on the books. It carried a 1 July 2026 effective date. It made Hawaii the first state in the country to advance a prediction-market ban out of committee, in February.

It passed the House. It was then referred to two Senate committees jointly — Commerce and Consumer Protection, chaired by Senator Jarrett Keohokalole, and Economic Development and Tourism, chaired by Senator Lynn DeCoite. A joint referral means both chairs have to agree to schedule. No hearing was ever scheduled, and the bill died when the deadline passed. Keohokalole has said publicly that he tried to move it and could not get the joint hearing on the calendar.

The bill was not short of support. It drew testimony in favour from the Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney, Steve Alm, in February. Matayoshi has said he intends to reintroduce it in the next session. Because there is no Senate companion and the introduction deadline has passed, nothing can revive it before then.

The speech that started it

The specific event that put HB 2198 on the board was a market on words. In January 2026, traders moved roughly $450,000 on which terms Governor Josh Green would use in his State of the State address — “homeless”, “mainland”, “tourism”. Alm raised it directly with the House Consumer Protection and Commerce Committee, arguing that a market on what an elected official says is a market with an obvious channel back into what the official does.

That is a narrower objection than the usual one. Most state complaints about prediction markets are about tax revenue and licensing parity: the state has a regulated sportsbook industry, and an unlicensed venue takes volume out of it. Hawaii has no industry and collects no betting tax, so it has no revenue argument at all. What is left is the integrity argument, and Hawaii is making it on its own terms.

What 28 August changed

On 28 August 2026 a Ninth Circuit panel — Ryan D. Nelson, who wrote the opinion, Bridget S. Bade and Kenneth K. Lee — ruled 3-0 that Kalshi’s sports event contracts are not swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act, and that what they are in substance is sports gambling, which states may regulate. The panel put it plainly: the substance of the contracts is sports gambling regardless of what Kalshi calls them.

The Ninth Circuit covers Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. That makes the holding binding on every federal district court in Hawaii. It also creates a split with the Third Circuit, which went the other way in April, and a split between circuits is the standard route to Supreme Court review.

What it does not do is change anything in Hawaii by itself. It was an appeal from Nevada’s case. It orders nobody in Hawaii to do anything. Its practical effect here is that if a Hawaii prosecutor or the Attorney General ever does send a letter, the preemption defence that has protected Kalshi in most of the country no longer works in this circuit. The tool was sharpened. Nobody has picked it up.

What this means if you are in Hawaii

The platforms work, and nothing here should be read as a statement that using them complies with chapter 712. No Hawaii court has ruled either way and no Hawaii resident has been charged over a prediction-market trade, which is a different thing from a ruling that it is lawful.

The more useful point is structural. In Nevada or Michigan, blocking a prediction market pushes a bettor toward a licensed sportsbook. In Hawaii there is nothing to push anyone toward. If enforcement ever arrives, the effect is removal, not redirection — and the realistic alternative is the offshore sites that are already illegal here and carry none of the consumer protections either side of this argument is claiming to defend.

The separate question: will Hawaii legalise sports betting?

HB 1308 was the closest Hawaii has come. In 2025 it passed the House 35-15 and the Senate 15-10, then died in conference committee over the tax rate, the licence fees and how many operators to admit. It carried into the 2026 session alongside a study group, and nothing passed. Governor Green has said he would sign a bill. The disagreement is not about whether, it is about the terms, and the terms have now failed twice.

The two tracks interact. As long as there is no licensed sportsbook, a ban on prediction markets leaves Hawaii with zero legal venues — which is a defensible position for a state that has chosen prohibition, but a politically harder one to argue than “use the regulated option instead”.

What would have to happen for this to change

Path	Who acts	How fast
Cease-and-desist or enforcement letter	Attorney General or a county prosecutor	Days. This is the cheapest path and it is now backed by binding circuit precedent.
Legislation	Legislature, on a refiled HB 2198	Next session at the earliest. The 2026 bill is dead and cannot be revived.
Supreme Court resolves the circuit split	US Supreme Court	A term or more. Would settle it for all fifty states at once.

FAQ

Is Kalshi legal in Hawaii?: Kalshi operates in Hawaii and no Hawaii authority has said it is illegal or taken action against it. Hawaii has not licensed it either, because Hawaii licenses no gambling at all. The honest answer is that it is untested: the platform is available, the state has never ruled, and since 28 August the state has a stronger legal footing to rule if it chooses to.
Has Hawaii sent Kalshi a cease-and-desist letter?: No. As of 31 August 2026 there is no cease-and-desist, no lawsuit and no formal opinion from the Hawaii Attorney General or any county prosecutor on record against Kalshi or Polymarket.
Does the Ninth Circuit ruling ban Kalshi in Hawaii?: No. The ruling came out of Nevada’s case and orders nothing in Hawaii. What it does is remove the federal-preemption defence Kalshi would raise if Hawaii ever acted, because Hawaii sits in the Ninth Circuit and the holding binds federal courts here.
Can I bet on sports legally in Hawaii?: There is no state-licensed sportsbook in Hawaii. HB 1308 failed in conference in 2025 and did not pass in 2026. Hawaii and Utah are the only two states with no legal gambling of any kind.
Why did HB 2198 fail if it passed the House?: It was referred jointly to two Senate committees and never scheduled for a hearing. Its Commerce and Consumer Protection chair has said he supported it and could not get the joint hearing on the calendar. With no Senate companion bill and the introduction deadline passed, it could not be revived this session.

Sources

See the full 50-state Kalshi legality tracker →