Robinhood Must Close Michigan Sports Event Contracts Oct 9

Robinhood must close every sports event contract still open on a Michigan account by the end of October 9, 2026, under an agreement a federal judge signed on September 4, and it agreed to stop offering new ones in Michigan after September 9. If you hold one from a Michigan account you have until October 9 to close it yourself. After that Robinhood closes it for you, and the order does not say at what price. Nothing in it touches a Michigan stock or crypto account.

The document is a stipulation and order in Robinhood Derivatives, LLC v. Nessel, No. 1:26-cv-00730, in the US District Court for the Western District of Michigan, entered by District Judge Paul L. Maloney. We read it off the federal docket rather than from any announcement, which is how we check everything we publish.

What exactly did Robinhood agree to?

Two dates and a trade.

The first commitment is that Robinhood "agrees to cease offering new sports-related event contracts in Michigan that are traded on any DCM, including the DCMs operated by KalshiEX LLC and Rothera Exchange and Clearing LLC, by September 9, 2026, end of day Eastern time." DCM is a Designated Contract Market, the CFTC category the whole fight is about.

The second is the one with money attached. Robinhood "further agrees to close any open sports-related event contracts by its Michigan customers (i.e., contracts opened on or before September 9, 2026, which remain open and which the customer has not closed out voluntarily) by October 9, 2026, end of day Eastern time."

In exchange, Michigan's attorney general and the six other state officials named as defendants agreed to "forbear from bringing any Enforcement Actions against Robinhood for sports-related event contracts" for as long as Robinhood keeps to the deal.

What happens to my open Michigan contract on October 9?

Robinhood closes it, unless you have closed it yourself first.

Read the parenthesis, because it is the only choice the document leaves you. A contract "the customer has not closed out voluntarily" is the one Robinhood closes. A contract you close yourself before October 9 settles at whatever the market gives you on the day. The order does not say at what price Robinhood closes the rest, and we are not going to guess: it is not in the document, and we have not asked the company. If you are holding a Michigan position, that is the question to put to Robinhood support now rather than on October 10.

Why is Robinhood pulling out now?

Because of a Michigan state court, not a federal one.

The stipulation's recitals say that the Circuit Court for the 30th Judicial Circuit in Ingham County "has entered a preliminary injunction in Nessel v. KalshiEX, LLC, 26-001087-CZ (Mich. 30th Cir.) enjoining KalshiEX LLC from, among other things, offering or listing sports-related event contracts in Michigan." It then records that the Michigan Department of Attorney General "has requested that Robinhood stop trading by its Michigan customers in sports-related event contracts in light of" that injunction, and that Robinhood "expressed the need for some time to communicate to customers and give its Michigan customers sufficient time to effectuate an orderly transition."

That one-month gap between the two deadlines is what "orderly transition" bought.

We have not read the Ingham County injunction itself. Michigan state court records are not publicly fetchable in the way federal dockets are, so our source for the state-court order is this federal filing, agreed to and signed by the attorney general's own lawyers and entered by a federal judge. That is a strong single source, and it is still a single source.

How long does the Michigan shutdown last?

Until an appeals court settles the question, or until the state injunction goes away.

The agreement runs until the first of two things happens: final resolution of any one of four Sixth Circuit appeals, or dissolution of the Ingham County injunction. The four appeals are:

1. Robinhood's own, No. 26-1542.
2. QCX LLC, trading as Polymarket US, No. 26-1552, consolidated with Robinhood's on July 2.
3. Coinbase's, No. 26-1693, out of the Eastern District of Michigan, where a federal judge denied Coinbase an injunction on August 6.
4. The consolidated Kalshi appeals from Ohio and Tennessee, Nos. 26-3196 and 26-5235.

The stipulation records that the Kalshi appeals are "fully briefed, and oral argument was heard on July 30, 2026," so the Sixth Circuit has had the core question in hand since the summer. Two of the four companies on that list are in state trouble elsewhere as well: we read the suits Baltimore filed against Kalshi and Polymarket, brought with the playbook that city first aimed at sweepstakes casinos.

Michigan is where this pattern started for us. The state never passed a sweepstakes ban and never needed one: the regulator closed the market with cease-and-desist orders, which is what our Michigan legality page records, and it is the pattern we found in 13 states that never passed a ban either. Three days ago a federal judge in Iowa rejected the identical argument from Kalshi, holding that sports event contracts are not swaps and that gambling is a field "traditionally reserved to the States."

For sweepstakes players the read-across is narrow but real. One sweepstakes company already made the jump this argument was supposed to protect: Novig retired both its coin currencies for a CFTC-designated exchange in August. Michigan has now shown what the downside of that route looks like when a state court moves first. Where your own state currently stands is on our state-by-state legality matrix, our guide to where sweepstakes casinos are legal explains how the categories work, and the brands we have tested and ranked is the list to use if yours is open. In Michigan itself all 33 brands we track exclude the state, so there is no sweepstakes balance left there to worry about. Where there is one, which brands pay out fastest and at what minimum is the page for the cash-out question a deadline like this one raises.

Sources & documents

• Stipulation and Order Concerning Enforcement, Robinhood Derivatives, LLC v. Nessel, No. 1:26-cv-00730 (W.D. Mich.), September 4, 2026
• Federal docket, Robinhood Derivatives, LLC v. Nessel (W.D. Mich.)
• Order Denying Motion for Preliminary Injunction, KalshiEX LLC v. Bird, No. 4:26-cv-00109 (S.D. Iowa), September 8, 2026

We read the stipulation in full on September 11, 2026, and every quotation above is verbatim from it. The appeal numbers, the consolidation date and the July 30 argument date are the ones recited in the order itself; the June 17 denial and the August 5 stay are docket entries 39 and 47. We have the agreement, not proof of performance: nothing we can read confirms what Robinhood actually did in Michigan on September 9, and we are reporting the obligation rather than assuming it was met. The Ingham County state court injunction is reported here on that single document and we have not seen the state court's own order. Robinhood's position on how closing prices will be set is not in the document and we have not asked the company.

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