A coalition of legal ethics advocates is pressing the Supreme Court to adopt a rule that would prohibit federal judges from placing bets on prediction markets, arguing that the growing popularity of platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket creates a direct conflict between judicial duty and personal profit.
The push comes as prediction markets have exploded in size and scope, now covering everything from election outcomes to Supreme Court rulings. Fix the Court, a judicial transparency organization, submitted a letter to the Court urging the justices to update their ethics rules to address what the group calls an obvious gap, as Courthouse News reported.
The current Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which the Supreme Court adopted in November 2023, does not specifically mention prediction markets. That silence, Fix the Court executive director Gabe Roth argued, leaves open the possibility that a sitting judge could place wagers on the outcome of cases before the federal judiciary, including cases before their own court.
Roth's letter to Chief Justice John Roberts asked the Court to amend the code to explicitly ban judges from buying or selling contracts on prediction markets tied to legal or political outcomes. The letter warned that even the appearance of a judge profiting from foreknowledge of a ruling would erode public trust in the courts.
"A judge wagering on the outcome of a case, whether or not it is one they are deciding, creates an untenable conflict of interest and undermines the public's confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary."
The request targets a specific and fast-growing corner of the financial world. Prediction markets allow users to buy and sell contracts pegged to the probability of real-world events. If a user bets that the Supreme Court will overturn a particular regulation and the Court does so, the contract pays out. Platforms like Kalshi gained regulatory approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in recent years, and trading volumes surged during the 2024 presidential election cycle.
Federal judges, unlike members of Congress or executive branch officials, operate under relatively few financial disclosure and trading restrictions beyond the general ethics code and recusal requirements. Members of Congress have faced years of scrutiny over stock trades that appeared to track nonpublic legislative information, but the judiciary has largely avoided that spotlight.
Prediction markets change the calculus. A federal appellate judge who sits on a panel hearing a major regulatory challenge could, in theory, purchase contracts on a prediction market tied to the outcome of that very case. Even a judge not assigned to a particular case might possess insight into the court's internal deliberations, voting patterns, or scheduling decisions that would give them an edge over ordinary traders.
The Supreme Court itself has become a frequent subject of prediction market contracts. Traders on Polymarket and Kalshi have placed bets on outcomes in high-profile cases involving abortion access, executive power, and environmental regulation. The Court's recent role as the final battleground in disputes over nationwide injunctions has only increased public and market interest in predicting how the justices will rule.
The Code of Conduct for United States Judges, as updated in late 2023, requires judges to avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety. It restricts certain financial activities and requires recusal when a judge has a financial interest in a party before the court. But the code was drafted before prediction markets reached their current scale and does not address event contracts or probability-based financial instruments.
Fix the Court's letter argued that this gap is not academic. The organization pointed to the rapid growth of legal prediction markets as evidence that the risk is real and imminent. Roth urged the Court to act before a scandal forces a reactive response.
The Supreme Court has shown a willingness in recent terms to wade into questions about the boundaries of federal authority and institutional integrity. The justices have taken up disputes over regulatory mandates and procedural questions with increasing frequency, making the Court's own docket a prime target for prediction market speculation.
Fix the Court acknowledged in its letter that it has no evidence any sitting federal judge has traded on prediction markets. The group framed its request as preventive rather than reactive. Roth argued that waiting for a confirmed incident would be too late to protect public confidence.
The letter also noted that lower federal courts handle thousands of cases each year with significant financial stakes for private parties. A district judge presiding over a patent dispute worth hundreds of millions of dollars, for example, could face enormous temptation if prediction markets began offering contracts on case outcomes at the trial court level.
Prediction market platforms have so far focused primarily on national political events and Supreme Court decisions. But the industry is expanding rapidly, and several platforms have signaled interest in offering contracts tied to a broader range of government actions, including regulatory decisions and lower court rulings.
The push to regulate judicial participation in prediction markets fits within a larger debate about ethics enforcement at the federal courts. The Supreme Court adopted its formal code of conduct only after sustained public pressure following reporting on undisclosed travel and gifts received by several justices. Critics argued for years that the Court's lack of a binding ethics code created an accountability vacuum.
Even after the 2023 code was adopted, enforcement questions remain. The code lacks a formal mechanism for investigating alleged violations by Supreme Court justices. Lower court judges are subject to the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act, which allows complaints to be filed and reviewed, but the process has drawn criticism for its opacity and infrequency of public sanctions.
The Court has simultaneously expanded its role in resolving politically charged legal disputes. Cases involving executive orders on immigration and fast-moving regulatory fights have placed the justices at the center of national policy debates, raising the financial stakes for anyone who can predict how the Court will act.
Fix the Court proposed that the amended ethics code should define prediction market contracts as a form of financial interest that triggers recusal obligations and, more broadly, should prohibit judges from holding any position in a prediction market tied to legal, political, or governmental outcomes.
The organization suggested that the prohibition should cover all federal judges, not just Supreme Court justices. The letter argued that limiting the rule to the high court would leave hundreds of district and appellate judges free to trade on markets that increasingly track lower court activity.
Whether the Supreme Court will act on the request is unclear. The justices are not required to respond to outside letters, and the Court has historically moved slowly on ethics reforms. The 2023 code of conduct took years of external pressure before it materialized, and even then, some transparency advocates called it insufficient.
The Court has shown it can move decisively on procedural and regulatory matters when it chooses. Recent rulings on mandatory procedural deadlines demonstrated the justices' willingness to enforce strict rules in other contexts. Whether they will apply similar rigor to their own financial conduct remains an open question.
For conservatives who value judicial independence and the rule of law, the prediction market question cuts in a clear direction. A judiciary that can be perceived as financially entangled with the outcomes of its own decisions loses the authority it needs to check the other branches of government. The integrity of the bench is not a partisan issue; it is a structural one.
Prediction markets themselves are not the problem. They serve a legitimate function in aggregating information and have earned bipartisan support as tools for forecasting. The problem arises when the people who control outcomes can also profit from predicting them. That is not a market; it is a conflict of interest with a trading interface.
Fix the Court's request does not ask the justices to condemn prediction markets or restrict public access to them. It asks the Court to draw a bright line: judges do not bet on justice.
If the Supreme Court cannot police that principle on its own, the pressure to impose it from the outside will only grow. And external enforcement of judicial ethics is something no one on the bench should want.
