Overview
The fourth and slowest of Michigan’s four platform cases, and the only one in the Eastern District. Coinbase Financial Markets, Inc. — Coinbase’s CFTC-registered futures commission merchant, a broker rather than an exchange — sued Michigan’s Attorney General and Gaming Control Board in December 2025, before any of the others. Its preliminary-injunction motion sat fully briefed for six months while the parties filed round after round of supplemental authority: the Tennessee ruling, the Third Circuit’s Flaherty opinion, Blue Lake Rancheria, Judge Maloney’s two June denials, and the CFTC’s proposed rule.
On August 6, 2026 Judge Shalina D. Kumar denied the preliminary injunction (amended order August 7, ECF No. 58, 46 pp.). Her route differs from Judge Maloney’s: the order turns on the presumption against preemption, holding that the text of CEA § 2(a)(1)(A) fails to rebut the presumption that the Act does not supersede state gambling laws, and that Coinbase therefore failed on express preemption and on its remaining theories alike. Coinbase appealed immediately.