The CFTC asks the White House to clear a rule making event contracts swaps, and the SEC is not on the filing

What happened

The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the part of the Office of Management and Budget that reviews federal rules before they are published, logged two Commodity Futures Trading Commission rules as received on 28 September 2026. The first, RIN 3038-AF82, is titled "Further Definition of "Swap" to Include Event Contracts" and is at the proposed rule stage. The second, RIN 3038-AF81, is titled "Further Definition of "Swap" to Exclude Casino-Style Gambling Products" and is an interim final rule. Both are marked as not economically significant and both are flagged as Dodd-Frank rules. The listings give a title, a stage and a date and nothing more: no abstract, no text and no account of what counts as a casino-style product. A third CFTC item has been pending since 17 September, a prerule titled "Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets". The CFTC has issued no release on either rule. The filings were reported on 30 September by Unchained and CoinDesk, which says the agency's requests "don't include any further detail or text of the rules".

Why it matters

The two rules go to the question the appeals courts have been answering without the agency. On 25 September the Sixth Circuit held that Kalshi's sports contracts are not swaps at all, because a game's result lacks the financial consequence the Act requires; the Ninth Circuit sided with Nevada in August, and the Third with Kalshi in April. A rule that defines event contracts as swaps is the agency's answer to the Sixth Circuit's first holding, and a rule carving out casino-style products marks a line between contracts the CFTC will defend and bets it leaves to the states. Which side sports contracts fall on is the whole dispute, and neither listing says. The order matters too. A proposed rule goes out for comment before it takes effect, while an interim final rule "generally takes effect when it is published, with comments collected afterward", as Unchained puts it, so the exclusion could bind before the inclusion is final. The filings also leave out half of the authority. Section 712(d) of Dodd-Frank gives the further definition of swap to the CFTC and the SEC together, in consultation with the Federal Reserve. The joint request for comment the two commissions published on 24 June records that in 2012 "the Commissions jointly adopted rules and interpretations" to further define swap, and says "market participants are raising questions about whether certain event contracts are swaps, SBS, or mixed swaps". Both items now under review carry the CFTC's RIN prefix alone, and the only SEC rules pending at OIRA on 1 October concern Rule 17a-7 and executive pay.

What is not settled

Everything that would decide the fight sits outside the listings: what the rule calls an event contract, whether sports contracts land on the swap side or the casino side, and whether the SEC joins before anything is published. CoinDesk reports that Chairman Mike Selig is the commission's only member, "leaving Selig as its lone member" after no other commissioners were nominated, so both rules carry one vote. A rule also cannot change the words of the Commodity Exchange Act, which is what the Sixth Circuit read, and the listings say nothing about how the agency expects a court to weigh its definition against that reading. One report is wrong on the courts. CoinDesk says the Sixth Circuit ruled "and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in its own similar ruling". The Sixth Circuit's opinion names the Third and the Ninth as the circuits that had ruled, with the Fourth pending, and Unchained gives the same map. No Eighth Circuit ruling was found. CoinDesk made the same substitution on 25 September and is the outlier.