WASHINGTON, Sept. 12, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — On Friday, PredictIt traders, academic users and market technology pioneer Aristotle filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, asking the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to plead the forced closure of popular event prediction market PredictIt in 2023. The lawsuit seeks an order blocking the CFTC’s lawsuit and asks the court to allow all existing markets to settle in an orderly fashion.

“We have sued because we believe the process by which the CFTC revoked the no action letter was very unfair. In particular, the agency has failed to fully consider the interests of traders who have invested in perfectly legal contracts that extend beyond February 2023 and academic users of PredictIt data,” said David Mason Aristotle General Counsel and former Federal Chairman Election Commission (FEC).

“The Commission took this step with no reasoned explanation for its decision, no explanation of facts that would support its decision, no transition plan to address numerous existing contracts held by tens of thousands of traders, and no consideration of alternatives to chaos, disruptive and economically damaging winding-up of the market forces its decision,” the lawsuit states in part.

Plaintiff Kevin Clarke has been a PredictIt dealer since 2020. “If a government agency takes these kinds of actions, they should have to explain why to those affected. It is unacceptable for a government agency to tell an individual or industry that their business needs to go out of business. It seeks to deflect any scrutiny of the mere possibility that its own internal processes may not yet be complete. PredictIt has made me a more aware and thoughtful consumer of political information, a trait that should be encouraged in today’s environment.”

Taken on August 4, 2022, the CFTC action not only threatens to impact the value of modest investments made by more than 80,000 PredictIt retailers, but also the quality of the…