Kalshi Trade-Data Privacy Class Action: Motion to Dismiss

A federal class action alleges Kalshi fed the details of its users' trades to four advertising and analytics trackers, and brings wiretap counts under Florida and Pennsylvania law. A motion to dismiss was docketed on September 21, 2026. The complaint, which we read in full, names an Amplitude analytics SDK, the LinkedIn Insight Tag, the TikTok Pixel and the AppLovin Pixel, and says the Amplitude feed carried which market the user bet on, which side they took, the dollar amount and the order ID. The motion papers are not readable on the public mirror, so we cannot tell you what the defence argues. Nothing here has been proven and nothing has been decided.

The case is Vazquez v. Kalshi, Inc., No. 1:26-cv-05821, in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, before Judge Dale E. Ho. It was filed on July 9, 2026 by three named plaintiffs, and until this week the docket held almost nothing but pro hac vice paperwork and two waivers of service.

What was filed on September 21?

Four entries, all docketed on September 21, 2026. The Southern District of New York's public electronic filing feed timestamps each one:

All four are bare clerk labels on the public mirror. There is no narrative text, no named filing party and no downloadable document behind any of them, so we cannot tell you what the dismissal argument is. Two things make the filer clear enough to report: the waivers of service returned on July 24 set the answer deadline for both Kalshi Inc. and KalshiEX LLC at September 21, 2026, and a Rule 7.1 corporate disclosure statement is a filing a corporate party makes about itself. We are reporting what the clerk called these documents and when they landed, the same standard we apply to every docket read in how we verify.

What data does the complaint say Kalshi shared?

The complaint itself is a public document and we read all 56 pages of it. Its central allegation is that Kalshi embedded third-party tracking code across its website and app, and that a user's single most sensitive action on the platform, placing a trade, was captured by four separate trackers.

According to the complaint, these are the four trackers and what each is alleged to have received:

The complaint frames why that matters for a betting product specifically. It argues that "there is a recognized stigma associated with gambling and gambling-adjacent conduct, particularly for individuals who struggle with compulsive gambling or gambling addiction", and that users therefore have "a heightened privacy interest in keeping their Kalshi activity confidential". It also alleges that Kalshi "merely 'recommend[s] reviewing' its Privacy Policy" and lets new users create an account without affirmatively agreeing to any of its terms.

None of that has been tested. It is one side's pleading, and the defence has now asked the court to throw the case out.

Who is suing, and under what law?

Adrian Vazquez of Hudson and Alexander Foley of Lake Wales are both Florida residents who the complaint says traded in June 2026. Nicholas Ross of Pittsburgh is a Pennsylvania resident who it says traded in 2025 and 2026. Kalshi Inc. is pleaded as a Delaware corporation headquartered in New York, and KalshiEX LLC as its wholly owned, federally regulated exchange subsidiary.

The Pennsylvania count is the one with a number attached. The complaint seeks liquidated damages under 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 5725(a) "computed at the rate of $100/day for each violation or $1,000, whichever is higher", plus punitive damages and fees. The Florida count seeks statutory, actual and punitive damages under Fla. Stat. § 934.10.

Who would be in the proposed classes?

This is the part worth checking against your own account, because the classes as pleaded are wide. No class has been certified, and a court may never certify one, but the complaint defines a nationwide class as "all natural persons in the United States who placed an event-contract trade on Kalshi's Digital Platforms and whose information about their betting, trading, or Digital Platform activity was collected and relayed to third parties by embedded tracking technologies."

The two state subclasses are the same definition narrowed to residents of Florida and of Pennsylvania, which are the two states whose wiretap statutes carry the first two counts. There is no purchase threshold, no date cut-off and no minimum loss in any of the three definitions: one trade is the pleaded entry point. Judges, the defendants and both sides' counsel are excluded.

Nothing is asked of a class member at this stage. Class members are not notified, and no claims process exists, unless and until a court certifies a class. The honest position today is that a Kalshi user reading this is inside a definition on a piece of paper, not inside a case they can join.

Why does this matter to a sweepstakes player?

Because it is a data case, not a gambling-legality case, and the two run on different tracks. Most of the Kalshi litigation we follow turns on whether a federally regulated event-contract exchange can be treated as gambling by a state, which is the question behind the New Jersey Supreme Court preemption petition, the Ninth Circuit's Nevada gaming-law ruling and the Baltimore suits against Kalshi and Polymarket. A state wiretap claim about tracking pixels does not depend on that question at all, so a preemption win would not necessarily end it.

It also sits alongside a growing set of player-side claims against the same company, including the withdrawal-freeze suit brought by a trader and the account-suspension and penalty claim we covered earlier this month.

What happens next is briefing, not a ruling. No opposition from the plaintiffs and no briefing schedule appear on the docket as of our September 22 read. The thing worth watching is whether Judge Ho reaches the question the first two counts turn on, which is whether the Florida and Pennsylvania wiretap statutes reach data sent from a website to an embedded third-party tracker. The complaint pleads the Pennsylvania Act's own definition of "intercept" to argue that they do; until the court rules, that is an argument and not a holding.

We could locate no public statement from Kalshi about this case, and the motion papers are not readable on the public mirror, so we have nothing from the company's side beyond the fact of the filing. The mirror also lags the court's own system, so a September 22 read is a snapshot and not a guarantee that nothing else has been entered.

Sources & documents

• Docket, Vazquez v. Kalshi, Inc., No. 1:26-cv-05821 (S.D.N.Y.) - entries 9 to 12, filed September 21, 2026
• Class action complaint as filed, July 9, 2026 (PDF) - the four counts, the tracker allegations and the class definitions
• Southern District of New York public electronic filing feed - independent timestamps for the four September 21 entries
• Caption search that located the docket

21+. Court filings contain allegations, not findings, and nothing here is legal advice. If gambling stops being fun, call or text 1-800-GAMBLER. Responsible gaming resources.