# Michael Liburdi **Michael Liburdi** (born 1977, Scranton, Pennsylvania) is a U.S. district judge in Arizona, nominated by [[Donald Trump]] in January 2019 and confirmed **53–37** on July 30, 2019. He is the judge who gave the [[CFTC]] its first win in its lawsuits against the states over prediction markets. ## Before the bench - Arizona State University (B.S. 1998; J.D. 2002); clerk to Arizona Supreme Court Justice Ruth McGregor. - Election lawyer: litigation staff attorney at the [[Federal Election Commission]] (2008), then partner at Snell & Wilmer and later Greenberg Traurig in Phoenix. He taught election law at ASU. - **General counsel to Gov. [[Doug Ducey]] (2015–2018).** - [[Federalist Society]] member since 2005. ## CFTC v. Arizona After the CFTC sued Arizona on April 2, 2026, the court entered a temporary restraining order (April 10) halting Attorney General [[Kris Mayes]]'s 20-count criminal case against [[Kalshi]]. In May Liburdi granted a **preliminary injunction** barring Arizona from enforcing its gambling laws against CFTC-registered exchanges. He held that sports event contracts are swaps and that the Commodity Exchange Act shuts state gambling law out, through both field and conflict preemption. "If states could prosecute DCM operators for offering event contracts, the operators would face the prospect of fifty different regulators." His ruling sits in the Ninth Circuit, which three months later held the opposite in Nevada's case. See [[CFTC v. Arizona]]. ## See also - [[CFTC v. Arizona]] · [[KalshiEX v. Flaherty]] · [[Kris Mayes]] · [[Doug Ducey]]