By John Fritze, CNN
(CNN) — Justice Amy Coney Barrett had a fast answer when she was asked during a recent Senate hearing if the Supreme Court had done anything to address the meteoric rise of prediction markets — and the ethical predicament they present for the judiciary.
“That’s already covered,” Barrett said confidently during a rare public appearance lobbying for millions of dollars in additional security funding. Justice Elena Kagan echoed the response a second later.
The response from Kagan and Barrett on prediction markets did little to quiet a growing pressure campaign to push the high court to explicitly ban employees from trading on sites like Kalshi and Polymarket – where users can bet on everything from the outcome of specific appeals to whether “any Supreme Court justice will be charged” with a federal crime.
The prediction sites, watchdog groups say, present an especially thorny ethical predicament for a branch of government that, by necessity, does much of its business behind closed doors. The justices and clerks who work in their secluded chambers often know the outcome of cases with global financial and political implications months before decisions are released to the public via carefully choreographed releases of opinions.
The court, meanwhile, has faced significant ethics scrutiny in recent years surrounding a series of luxury trips gifted to some of the justices.
“It is vitally important that the American public have trust in the courts, and taking further action to create a clear standard is critical to regaining that trust,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, wrote to the Supreme Court on Tuesday in a letter reviewed by CNN.
Van Hollen urged Chief Justice John Roberts to consider “clearly and expressly prohibiting” justices, judges, staff, clerks and others from participating in the markets at all.
The latest push arrives as other branches of the federal government have taken at least some steps to crack down on insider trading on the sites.
The Senate adopted a rule banning senators and their staff from trading on the markets. Several House members have also imposed officewide bans for their staff. Congress is considering several bills that ban or limit the justices and other federal government employees from using the sites. Some governors have also issued executive orders banning state employees from using insider information from their jobs to make money on prediction sites.
Despite those developments, a teleprompter operator who worked for President Donald Trump at the White House is now under investigation by federal regulators for allegedly making trades on Kalshi’s “mention markets,” where users can bet on which words and phrases public figures will say at public events or speeches.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump believed the incident was “deeply unfortunate and frankly a disgrace” and said the employee was cooperating with the probe and placed on unpaid leave.
Barrett and Kagan suggested that the court’s current policies already address the concerns raised by court watchdogs and others. They told lawmakers they would review those policies in light of what Kagan described as an “incredibly important area.”
“We don’t want loopholes,” Barrett said.
A Supreme Court spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. There have been no allegations of court staff or justices misusing prediction markets.
Ethics rules under scrutiny again
Following a series of news reports about luxury travel gifted to some of the justices, the court adopted a first-of-its-kind code of ethics in 2023. That document bars the nine justices from using “nonpublic information acquired in a judicial capacity for any purpose unrelated to the justice’s official duties.”
A separate code bans judicial employees from using “any confidential information” for “personal gain.”
But the court’s code of ethics has been roundly criticized for lacking any enforcement mechanism. And the language doesn’t appear to ban a clerk, for instance, from betting on an issue that might come before the court in the future but is not there yet or from betting on potential actions taken by the other branches of the government — a circumstance that could still raise questions about impartiality.
“The current code of conduct should prohibit judges and justices from using insider knowledge to make money,” Rep. Greg Landsman, an Ohio Democrat who has introduced a bill that would ban justices and others from wagering on government action and politics, told CNN.
“But with the recent prediction market scandals involving government officials,” Landsman said, “it’s critical — and in the court’s interest — to lead on this and explicitly say that justices, judges and their staff are prohibited from participating in prediction markets, now or in the future.”
The lack of teeth in the Supreme Court’s ethics code became a focus of House and Senate hearings last week. Even though the criticism is years old, lawmakers had not been able to ask the justices about it publicly because no member of the court had appeared before Congress since 2019. As she has in past public comments, Kagan said she would support a mechanism for enforcing the code.
Barrett pointed to challenges in choosing a body that would police the nine justices who sit atop the federal judiciary.
Prediction markets sure thing for docket
Legal questions about prediction markets, and the ability of states to regulate them, will almost certainly wind up on the Supreme Court’s docket before the end of this year.
Several states are battling in lower courts with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over whether that federal agency has exclusive jurisdiction to regulate the sites or whether states — which have traditionally overseen gambling — have a role.
Under current US law, prediction sites aren’t considered gambling. Rather, they’re financial markets that offer “event contracts.” They’re regulated like futures trading – but instead of focusing on commodities, users speculate on the outcome of elections, sporting events, awards shows, the weather and more.
Dozens of states have argued that the prediction sites are, in fact, gambling and are operating unlawfully without state gaming licenses.
Officials in New Jersey late last month were granted an extension until August to file an appeal at the Supreme Court in a case that could decide who may regulate the markets. A divided 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Philadelphia, found that Kalshi was likely to win on its argument that federal law bars states from stepping in to control sports gambling on the site.
CNN has a partnership with Kalshi and uses its data to cover events. CNN editorial employees are not allowed to trade on prediction markets.
“I understand the argument that ethics codes are typically general,” said Gabe Roth, who leads Fix the Court, a group that advocates for transparency and other reforms in the judiciary. “But given that the use of prediction markets by government officials has received so much attention lately, I don’t see why SCOTUS is so reticent to be more explicit.”
CNN’s Marshall Cohen contributed to this report.
The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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