Underdog Predict Sues Connecticut AG, 6 States in 8 Days

Underdog Exchange DCM sued Connecticut Attorney General William Tong in federal court on September 15, 2026, five days after Connecticut ordered Underdog Predict to stop serving the state. That makes six federal lawsuits against state officials in eight days, and Connecticut is the only one of the six where sweepstakes casinos are banned outright. Nothing in it changes what you can play today: the cease-and-desist stands, and no court has ruled.

The new case is Underdog Exchange DCM, Inc. v. Tong, No. 3:26-cv-01499, in the District of Connecticut. We read it off the federal docket on September 16 and pulled two of the five earlier complaints in full from RECAP, the public mirror of federal court filings, as we do with every document we cite.

What did Underdog file in Connecticut?

A complaint, a notice of related case, a disclosure statement and a request to issue summons, all docketed on September 15, 2026. No judge is listed yet, and none of the four documents has been released from the paywall, so we can report that the case exists and what the clerk labelled each filing. We cannot quote the Connecticut complaint, and we are not going to assume its contents from its siblings.

What we can do is read the siblings. The complaint filed in Massachusetts opens by asking the court to stop state officials "from unlawfully exercising jurisdiction over, regulating, or terminating Underdog's offering of lawful derivatives contracts on federally regulated markets." It pleads three counts, all under the Supremacy Clause: express preemption, field preemption and conflict preemption. It asks for a declaratory judgment and a permanent injunction. It asks for no money at all.

The timing is the part worth holding onto. On September 10, 2026, Connecticut's Department of Consumer Protection announced nine cease-and-desist orders against prediction markets, and Underdog Predict was on the list, alongside Polymarket, Coinbase, Crypto.com, Robinhood, ProphetX, Novig, Webull and Gemini. We covered that order the day after it landed. Five days later Underdog went to federal court. The Connecticut sequence, in three dates:

1. October 1, 2025 - Public Act 25-112 takes effect and sweepstakes casinos become illegal in Connecticut.
2. September 10, 2026 - the Department of Consumer Protection issues cease-and-desist orders to nine prediction markets, Underdog Predict among them.
3. September 15, 2026 - Underdog Exchange DCM sues Attorney General William Tong in the District of Connecticut.

Which six states has Underdog sued?

Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Ohio, Washington and Wisconsin. Five were filed on September 8, Connecticut on September 15. Every case is captioned Underdog Exchange DCM, Inc. v. the named attorney general. Four of the six add the members of the state gaming regulator as co-defendants, Wisconsin adds its gaming administrator, and the Connecticut docket, one day old when we read it, lists only Tong so far.

Robbenhaar is a magistrate judge; the other four are district judges. The Washington defendant list also includes Victoria Woodards, whom the Washington State Gambling Commission announced as a new commissioner on August 14, 2026. The Wisconsin defendants, Attorney General Kaul and gaming administrator John Dillett, are the same two officials Novig sued on August 14 on the same legal theory. Eight days before that, Novig had sued Massachusetts, Washington and New Mexico as well, so four of Underdog's six states are a fight another exchange picked first.

Ohio has the longest defendant list of the six. The clerk issued nine summonses there on September 8: Attorney General Andy Wilson, who took the office in June 2026, and eight members and officials of the Ohio Casino Control Commission. The commission's own meeting minutes identify them as Chair Thomas J. Stickrath, Vice Chair Penelope Cunningham, Commissioners Sheetal Bajoria, Scott Borgemenke, Triffon Callos, Keith Cheney and Christopher Smitherman, and Deputy Executive Director Andromeda Morrison. Sweepstakes casinos are unaffected in Ohio either way: none of the 33 brands we track excludes the state.

Why does Underdog sue states when sweepstakes casinos leave?

Because Underdog holds something no sweepstakes casino holds: a federal designation.

Underdog runs a CFTC-designated contract market and a registered futures commission merchant. Its argument is that the Commodity Exchange Act gives the Commodity Futures Trading Commission "exclusive jurisdiction" over trading on those markets, so a state gambling statute cannot reach it. The federal regulator has said the same thing in public. In an April 24, 2026 release about its Massachusetts filing, CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig said: "To any state that seeks to nullify federal law and seize authority over these markets, I say again: we will see you in court." That release also records that the CFTC had by then sued Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois and New York itself. The list has grown since. The New Mexico complaint records that on June 12, 2026 the United States and the CFTC sued the State of New Mexico, its governor, its attorney general and the members of its Gaming Control Board in the same federal district where Underdog has now filed.

A sweepstakes casino has no equivalent. There is no federal licence for a dual-currency sweepstakes promotion, so when a state bans the model the operators pull out rather than litigate preemption. That is exactly what happened in Connecticut, where Public Act 25-112 took effect on October 1, 2025, and in Washington, where every one of the 33 brands we track blocks the state. The contrast is the story: in the same states, one category leaves and the other sues.

It is not a free win for the exchanges. The New Mexico complaint records that Attorney General Torrez sued Kalshi in state court on June 4, 2026, alleging the platform "violates numerous provisions of New Mexico's Criminal Code and Gaming Control Act", that Kalshi removed the case to federal court on June 8 and that the state's motion to remand is pending. The Massachusetts complaint records that the same argument produced a preliminary injunction against Kalshi in Massachusetts, since stayed pending appeal; a federal judge there also froze Novig's parallel suit on August 24 until the state's Supreme Judicial Court decides Kalshi's appeal. Kalshi itself appealed an Iowa loss to the Eighth Circuit this week without a stay. Courts are split, and nothing in these six filings has been decided.

Two of the six states have already seen this argument fail, in cases brought by other companies. A federal judge in Connecticut refused on August 10, 2026 to shield Kalshi or Coinbase from state gambling law, holding that a CFTC licence does not displace a state's power to regulate wagering, and a Washington state judge held two days later that the Commodity Exchange Act does not preempt Washington's gambling statutes. Neither ruling involved Underdog, and neither binds the judge who will hear its case.

Does this change anything for players right now?

Nothing yet, and that is the honest answer. A complaint is a request. No court has ordered any of these six states to stand down, and the Connecticut cease-and-desist remains in force while the case runs.

Can I withdraw money held with Underdog Predict in Connecticut?

The state's own announcement is the only instruction on the record, and it contradicts itself on how many platforms it covers. If you hold a balance with any of the nine companies Connecticut named, that announcement said the state ordered platforms to let Connecticut residents withdraw funds they are holding, though the release writes that instruction as covering "all three platforms" in the same paragraph that orders "all nine" to stop. We flagged that inconsistency when it was published and it has not been corrected. Underdog's app domain returned a 403 to us on September 16, homepage and help centre alike, but its public disclosure page at underdogpredict.com and its legal centre at legal.underdogpredict.com both loaded, and neither mentions Connecticut anywhere. The company has published no notice to Connecticut customers that we can find.

Can I still play sweepstakes casinos in these six states?

In four of the six, yes. None of the 33 sweepstakes brands on our ranked list accepts players in Connecticut or Washington: Connecticut's ban has been in force since October 1, 2025, and every brand we have tested blocks Washington as well. Sweeps play remains permitted in Massachusetts, New Mexico and Wisconsin as well as Ohio, and none of these six lawsuits touches that. If your own state is not one of the six, it is on the state-by-state legality matrix, and our guide to where sweepstakes casinos are legal explains how the three categories differ.

Sources & documents

• CourtListener docket, Underdog Exchange DCM, Inc. v. Tong, No. 3:26-cv-01499 (D. Conn.) and its entry list - read September 16, 2026, showing four entries filed September 15 and no free documents
• CourtListener caption search for Underdog - 38 federal dockets, the source of the six case numbers, judges and defendant lists in the table above
• Entry list for the Ohio docket - 24 entries, including the nine summonses issued September 8, 2026, one per named defendant
• Ohio Casino Control Commission meeting minutes, September 17, 2025 - the commission roles of the eight Ohio co-defendants
• Complaint, Underdog Exchange DCM, Inc. v. Campbell, ECF 1 (D. Mass., filed September 8, 2026) - 43 pages, the three preemption counts, the prayer for relief and the Massachusetts Kalshi injunction
• Complaint, Underdog Exchange DCM, Inc. v. Torrez, ECF 1 (D.N.M., filed September 8, 2026) - 39 pages, including the account of the June 4, 2026 New Mexico enforcement action against Kalshi and its removal
• Western District of Washington electronic filing feed - the court's own entry list, which is where we first saw the Washington case move
• Governor Lamont and Commissioner Cafferelli, "New Actions Against Illegal Prediction Markets Offering Sports Wagers in Connecticut", September 10, 2026 - the nine named companies, the subpoena counts and the withdrawal instruction
• CFTC release 9219-26, April 24, 2026 - Chairman Selig's statement and the list of states the CFTC had sued
• Washington State Gambling Commission news page - the August 14, 2026 announcement of Commissioner Woodards, named as a defendant in the Washington case
• Underdog Predict Legal Center - loaded September 16, 2026; no mention of Connecticut in it or on the disclosure page at underdogpredict.com

Every docket and document above was fetched and read on September 16, 2026. One source we could not load: the Ohio Attorney General's website refused connections from our network all morning, so Andy Wilson's office and the June 2026 date we give for his taking it rest on that office's own news release, "Andy Wilson Begins Tenure as Ohio Attorney General", which we located by searching the ohioattorneygeneral.gov domain but could not open. The Ohio docket independently lists Wilson separately from the eight Casino Control Commission defendants. This piece alleges no wrongdoing by any company or official: the claims in the six complaints are untested allegations, the Connecticut cease-and-desist records the state's position rather than a court's, and none of the officials named has been asked for comment or responded publicly on these filings.

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