Stake.us Missouri Lawsuit: No Discovery Into Drake

A second federal court has partly unfrozen a Stake.us class action to let Drake and Adin Ross argue they do not belong in it. On August 21, 2026, a Missouri judge lifted the stay for that purpose, gave both men 21 days to file motions to dismiss, and refused the player suing them the discovery he wanted into what ties the two promoters to Missouri.

The case is Killham v. Sweepsteaks Limited; Adin Ross; and Aubrey Drake Graham, No. 4:25-cv-00990, in the Western District of Missouri. We pulled the two-page order from the federal docket and read it against the docket's 51 entries. District Judge Greg Kays signed it. It does four things:

1. Lifts the stay, but only so Aubrey Drake Graham and Adin Ross can contest personal jurisdiction.
2. Gives both men 21 days from entry of the order to file motions to dismiss.
3. Refuses Killham the jurisdictional discovery he asked for into the promoters' contacts with Missouri.
4. Leaves the case stayed in all other respects, with the next joint status report due November 11, 2026, or sooner if Illinois rules first.

Four days earlier a judge in New Mexico did something close to the same thing, which we covered when Drake and Adin Ross were handed a 21-day deadline there. Missouri goes one step further, and that step is the story.

What is different about the Missouri order?

The New Mexico judge stayed discovery generally and never reached the question of whether jurisdictional discovery would be proper. This one reached it, and said no.

Justin Killham asked for either a continued freeze or, failing that, permission to take jurisdictional discovery to establish whether the court has personal jurisdiction over the two promoters. Judge Kays refused: "The Court also finds that jurisdictional discovery is not proper at this stage for the reasons cited by Defendants in the joint status report." The order adopts three cases the defence cited, including the Eighth Circuit's 2011 decision in Viasystems v. EBM-Papst St. Georgen.

The reasoning on the stay itself runs the same way. The court "agrees with Ross and Graham's position that a partial lifting of the stay to determine personal jurisdiction would promote judicial economy and that a failure to do so would prejudice them, because that would tie the preliminary determination of jurisdiction here to cases in other courts over which this Court has no control."

That is a judge declining to let his docket be governed by another court's calendar. Both sides had been waiting on Illinois.

What happens next, and when?

The September date is our calculation from the order's "no later than twenty-one days after entry of this Order" and the entry date, not a date the court has printed. Everything else in the case stays frozen. Point 5 of the order is one line: "The case remains STAYED in all other respects."

There is one thing that frozen list does not include, and it matters for what happens next. Missouri has no arbitration motion waiting to be decided. All three defendants filed one jointly on February 6, 2026, at entry 27, but when Judge Kays stayed the case on July 9 he went further than a stay: entry 49 reads that "the pending motions 24 25 27 29 34 36 and 40 are DENIED WITHOUT PREJUDICE and can be refiled if and when this case returns to active litigation." So the arbitration question in this case is not merely paused. It has to be started again, by a new filing, after the stay lifts. That is the opposite of New Mexico, where the equivalent motion is expressly held in place: point 4 of that order says the action "remains STAYED as to Defendants' anticipated Motion to Compel Arbitration."

Why did these cases start moving now?

Because Virginia ruled, and half the country's sweeps dockets were watching it.

Judge Kays had stayed Killham on July 9 and told the parties to report back on September 25, 2026, "or within fourteen days of a ruling on the pending motions to compel arbitration in Urdan v. Sweepsteaks Limited, No. 1:25 cv-03736 (N.D. Ill.), or Ridley v. Sweepsteaks Limited, No. 1:25-cv-02511-LMB-WEF (E.D. Va.), whichever was earlier." On July 30 a judge in Virginia sent eight Stake.us players into individual arbitration. The clock started, the joint status report went in, and two courts have now rewritten their schedules off the back of it.

Urdan, in Illinois, is now the one the rest of this group is waiting on. Both the Missouri and New Mexico orders drop Ridley from their trigger and set their next status report for the same day, November 11, or sooner if Illinois rules first, which is as much as either document tells us about where Urdan stands. We have not read that docket and make no claim about its briefing.

What does this mean for a Stake.us player?

Nothing about your account, and that is worth saying plainly rather than leaving to inference. No order in this case touches balances, redemptions or access. Discovery is stayed, and nothing has been decided about whether Stake.us or its operator did anything wrong.

The part that will eventually matter to a player is the one still unanswered: whether a claim against Stake.us gets heard in court as a class action or one player at a time in private arbitration. Missouri has not decided that and, having denied the joint motion without prejudice, no longer has it in front of it. Virginia compelled arbitration, Minnesota refused on two grounds, and the case both of these orders now key off is Urdan in Illinois. Until that lands, the honest answer about your route is that it depends on which court you are in.

What it means practically is that the next public documents in this case, due in about three weeks, will be Graham's and Ross's own accounts of what their Stake.us arrangements were and were not, in the form of motions to dismiss supported by sworn declarations. Graham has filed one of these before: his New Mexico declaration, entered in February, denies that he ever "directed, tailored, or targeted" his Stake.us promotional content at that state, and we quoted it at length in our report on the New Mexico order. Expect the Missouri version to run the same way with a different state name in it. What is new is that Killham has been refused the discovery that would let him test those denials, so for now the promoters' account of their own reach is the only one on the record.

For the wider picture, the ranked table shows where Stake.us sits against brands with no comparable litigation, and our note on how we check operator documents covers what we do when a company's paperwork and a court record disagree.

Sources & documents

• Order Partially Lifting Stay, Killham v. Sweepsteaks Limited, No. 4:25-cv-00990 (W.D. Mo.), Doc. 51, filed August 21, 2026 - two pages, signed by District Judge Greg Kays
• CourtListener docket, Killham v. Sweepsteaks Limited - 51 entries, read August 24, 2026
• Order Partially Lifting Stay, Torres v. Sweepsteaks Limited, No. 1:25-cv-01292 (D.N.M.), Doc. 25, filed August 17, 2026 - the New Mexico order this one follows

Every quotation is verbatim from the August 21 order, from the text of the July 9 stay order at entry 49 of the same docket, or from the August 17 New Mexico order, all read on August 24, 2026. The joint status report the order relies on, entry 50, is not in the public mirror, so we have read the court's description of what each side argued and not the filing itself. The September 11 deadline is our own count from the order's 21-day term and its entry date, not a date the court has stated. This article makes no allegation of wrongdoing against Sweepsteaks Limited, Aubrey Drake Graham or Adin Ross: the claims are untested allegations and the defendants dispute the jurisdictional facts. None of them was asked to comment before publication. If any responds, this piece gets updated.

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