Stake.us Massachusetts Class Action: Motion to Vacate Award
- OCT 17, 2026 - The motion this article is about has been decided, and the article said it was still undecided. On October 16, 2026 Judge Stearns issued a six-page memorandum and order, docket entry 41, denying the players' motion to vacate and granting Sweepsteaks Limited's cross-motion to confirm the award. The order, which is on the free public mirror, answers three things this article could not: the award was a July 30, 2026 American Arbitration Association determination by Arbitrator Paula M. Bagger that the arbitration agreement is binding, limited to that question and not a money award; the players argued that the court lacked power to confirm and that the arbitrator exceeded her powers; and entry 38 of September 21, logged only as "Miscellaneous Relief", was the operator's opposition and cross-motion to confirm. The description, the opening paragraph, the date list, the table row and the FAQ answers now say so, and the ruling is reported in full in [our report on the confirmed award](/news/stake-us-massachusetts-arbitration-award-confirmed/).
- SEP 21, 2026 - The Deleon docket moved twice on the afternoon of September 21, 2026, and this article said in three places that Sweepsteaks Limited had filed no response and that the September 12 entry was the last thing on the file. Entry 38, which the clerk logged as "Miscellaneous Relief", is timestamped 17:33:00 GMT on the District of Massachusetts electronic filing feed; entry 39, logged as "Memorandum in Opposition to Motion", is timestamped 17:43:03 GMT. Both are bare clerk labels on the public mirror: no narrative text, no named filing party, no downloadable document, and the mirror reports neither as available. The label on entry 39 does not name the motion it opposes or who filed it, so we are not reporting this as the operator answering the motion to vacate. Two reasons for that restraint. The identical label sits on entry 16 of this same docket, from September 2025, where it covered an opposition to a different motion, the plaintiff's request to proceed under a pseudonym. And the mirror carries no entry numbered 37, so at least one filing between September 12 and September 21 is not visible to us. What we can report is that two documents were filed on September 21 and what the clerk called them. The date list and the FAQ answer have been corrected. The motion to vacate filed on August 31 is still undecided and no order appears against it.
- SEP 13, 2026 - The Massachusetts docket moved again the day after our last note, and that note said entry 36 of September 11 was the last thing on the file. It is not. An unnumbered entry went on the Deleon docket on September 12, 2026, logged by the clerk as "Order on Motion for Extension of Time", which is the court ruling on the extension request entry 36 recorded the day before. It carries no clerk narrative and no downloadable document, so we can report that the court has acted on that request and nothing about whose time was extended, to when, or whether it touches the motion to vacate. The date list and the FAQ answer have been corrected. The motion to vacate filed on August 31 is still undecided, no order appears against it, and Sweepsteaks Limited has still filed no response to it on the public docket.
- SEP 12, 2026 - The Massachusetts docket has moved, and the note we published yesterday said it had not. Entry 36 went on the Deleon file on September 11, 2026, logged by the clerk as "Extension of Time". It carries no clerk narrative, no filing party and no downloadable document, so we can report that it exists and what the clerk called it and nothing more; in particular we cannot tell you whose time was extended or to when. The September 1 order dropping the second plaintiff's pseudonym is therefore no longer the last thing on the file, and the sentences saying so in the date list and in the FAQ have been corrected. The motion to vacate filed on August 31 is still undecided and no order appears against it. Separately, the row in the table of other Stake.us cases said the operator filed its Eighth Circuit opening brief on September 10. September 10 was the due date and the day the brief was submitted for review; the court's own entry records the brief and addendum as filed on September 11, with service the same day, which is the date our later report on that brief uses. The row now says both.
- SEP 11, 2026 - One row in the table of other Stake.us cases gave a deadline that has now passed, and the thing it was waiting for has happened. Sweepsteaks Limited filed its appellant brief and addendum in the Eighth Circuit appeal, Wolters v. Sweepsteaks Limited, No. 26-2459, on September 10, 2026, the day its opening brief was due. That row now says so. The Massachusetts docket this article is about has not moved: on a September 11 re-read its last entry is still the September 1 order dropping the second plaintiff's pseudonym, the motion to vacate filed on August 31 is still undecided, and Sweepsteaks Limited still has not responded to it on the public docket. Nothing else in the article changes.
- SEP 3, 2026 - This article originally said the Massachusetts case was the only one of the sixteen Sweepsteaks Limited dockets where an arbitration had run its course and returned to a judge in public, and it repeated that claim twice more in the body. That was wrong. Sweepsteaks Limited d/b/a Stake.us v. Zawadzki, No. 1:26-cv-06840 (N.D. Ill.), is the operator's own action to enforce an arbitration award against a player, filed on June 10, 2026 - more than eleven weeks before the Massachusetts motion - and it is one of those sixteen dockets. A separate suit the same player brought in Chicago, Zawadzki v. Sweepsteaks Limited, No. 1:26-cv-04478, had already put an arbitration award in front of a judge in April 2026. All three claims of precedence have been removed rather than renumbered. Nothing else changed; the August 31 filing, its six attachments and the Deleon record were re-checked and are unaffected.
Two Massachusetts players ordered into private arbitration with Stake.us asked a federal judge on August 31, 2026 to vacate - throw out - the arbitrator's award against them, and on October 16, 2026 the judge denied the motion and confirmed the award, which had found the Stake.us arbitration clause binding. The case is Deleon v. Sweepsteaks Limited, No. 1:25-cv-11481, a class action in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The award and the brief attacking it are not public; the judge's order is.
That is the whole shape of the thing. A sweepstakes casino's terms send your dispute somewhere nobody can watch, and the only part of it you ever get to see is the fight over the result at the very end. This page is the case file: the complaint, the route into arbitration, every docket date and where the other Stake.us lawsuits stand. For what the October 16 order decided and why, read our report on the judge confirming the Stake.us award.
We found this on the docket, not in a press release, which is how we check every claim we publish. As of the evening of September 2 we could locate no coverage of it anywhere.
Deleon is before District Judge Richard G. Stearns. Our Sweepsteaks Limited operator profile has the corporate detail on the Cyprus-registered company behind Stake.us.
What did the Massachusetts players file on August 31?
Docket entry 33 reads "MOTION to Vacate Arbitral Award by Wascar Deleon, M. M." It arrived with six attachments: a 25-page supporting brief, a 3-page declaration from plaintiffs' counsel, and four exhibits running 4, 8, 21 and 2 pages.
The same day, both sides jointly asked the court to drop the second plaintiff's pseudonym and amend the caption. Judge Stearns granted that on September 1. The complaint had explained that pseudonym by saying the plaintiff "struggles with gambling addiction" and did not want to disclose personal mental health information. He is now proceeding under his own name.
None of the six August 31 documents is in the free public mirror of the docket, so we have not read the brief and we have not read the award. We do not know the grounds, the amount, or the arbitrator. What we know is who filed: the players, not the operator. The court's October 16 order has since filled in the gaps: the arbitrator was Paula M. Bagger of the American Arbitration Association, the award decided only that the arbitration agreement was binding, and the players argued that she exceeded her powers.
How did a Massachusetts lawsuit end up in arbitration?
The players sued first. Their class action complaint, filed May 23, 2025, pleads three counts on behalf of "All persons in Massachusetts who gambled on Stake.us" - Massachusetts consumer-protection law (ch. 93A), the state's gambling-loss statute (ch. 137, § 1, which they say entitles the class to treble damages), and unjust enrichment in the alternative. The prayer asks for "injunctive relief shutting down the operation of Stake's unlawful gambling websites, Stake.us."
Those are allegations. No court has found Stake.us or Sweepsteaks Limited liable for anything in this case, and the ruling below decided where the dispute is heard, not who is right.
On November 20, 2025, Judge Stearns granted the company's motion to compel arbitration in a four-page order we pulled and read in full. He never reached whether the terms are void. He did not have to, because section 26.6 of the Stake.us terms, quoted in the order, says both sides agree that "any and all Disputes, including without limitation any question regarding the existence, validity, enforceability, or termination of these Terms and Conditions and/or this clause 26 ... shall be referred to and finally resolved by arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association."
That is a delegation clause, and it is the whole ballgame. The order's holding: "Because the parties delegated issues of arbitrability to the arbitrator, the question of the validity of the arbitration agreement is to be resolved by the arbitrator." It ends by staying the case pending the arbitrator's decision. A separate electronic order entered the same day, docket entry 29, closed the case administratively and required status reports "every 90 days or five days after the final decision of the arbitrator, whichever comes first."
Those reports landed on February 18, May 18 and August 17, 2026. Two weeks after the third one, the motion to vacate appeared.
What is the timeline of the Deleon case?
Eleven dates, from the class action in May 2025 to the October 16, 2026 ruling:
- May 23, 2025 - the class action is filed in the District of Massachusetts.
- November 20, 2025 - Judge Stearns compels arbitration and closes the case administratively.
- February 18, 2026 - first 90-day status report.
- May 18, 2026 - second status report.
- August 17, 2026 - third status report.
- August 31, 2026 - the players move to vacate the arbitral award, with six attachments.
- September 1, 2026 - the court drops the second plaintiff's pseudonym and amends the caption.
- September 11, 2026 - entry 36, logged by the clerk as "Extension of Time", with no text and no public document.
- September 12, 2026 - an unnumbered entry logged as "Order on Motion for Extension of Time", the court ruling on that request, also with no text and no public document.
- September 21, 2026 - two entries land within ten minutes of each other: entry 38, logged as "Miscellaneous Relief" at 17:33:00 GMT, and entry 39, logged as "Memorandum in Opposition to Motion" at 17:43:03 GMT. Neither carries clerk narrative, a filing party or a downloadable document on the public mirror, and the label on entry 39 does not say which motion it opposes. The mirror carries no entry numbered 37 either, so something between September 12 and these two is not visible to us.
- October 16, 2026 - entry 41: a six-page memorandum and order denies the motion to vacate and grants Sweepsteaks Limited's cross-motion to confirm, which the order says was filed on September 21. Our report on the confirmed award has the detail.
Where do the other Stake.us lawsuits stand?
Deleon is not the first player sent into arbitration by these terms, and what happens to the others is mostly silence. Three other federal courts have compelled Stake.us players to arbitrate. On a re-read of all three on September 21, 2026, the public mirror records no entry on any of them since the day its order landed: Boyle quiet since May 19, 2025, Gardner since July 10, 2026, Ridley since July 30, 2026. Arbitration is where these cases go to stop being visible.
| Case | Court | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|
| Boyle v. Sweepsteaks Limited, 8:25-cv-00302 | California - C.D. Cal. | Arbitration compelled May 19, 2025, case stayed; nothing filed since |
| Deleon v. Sweepsteaks Limited, 1:25-cv-11481 | Massachusetts - D. Mass. | Arbitration compelled Nov 20, 2025; arbitrator found the clause binding July 30, 2026; motion to vacate denied and award confirmed Oct 16, 2026 |
| Gardner v. Sweepsteaks Limited, 2:25-cv-00994 | Utah - D. Utah | Arbitration compelled July 10, 2026; the player filed a notice of non-opposition |
| Ridley v. Sweepsteaks Ltd., 1:25-cv-02511 | Virginia - E.D. Va. | Eight players compelled July 30, 2026; first status report due late November |
| Wolters v. Sweepsteaks Limited, 26-2459 | Minnesota - 8th Circuit | Arbitration denied below; operator submitted its opening brief and addendum on Sept 10, 2026, its due date, and the court filed both on Sept 11 |
| Killham v. Sweepsteaks Limited, 4:25-cv-00990 | Missouri - W.D. Mo. | Stayed July 9, 2026 pending the Urdan and Ridley arbitration rulings; stay partly lifted Aug 21 with jurisdictional discovery refused; status report due Sept 25, 2026 |
| Nufio v. Sweepsteaks Ltd., 3:26-cv-08394 | New Jersey - D.N.J. | Active since Stake.us removed it from state court on July 8; counsel admissions and a litigation-funding disclosure in August |
| Sweepsteaks Limited v. Zawadzki, 1:26-cv-06840 | Illinois - N.D. Ill. | The operator's own suit to enforce an award; the player cross-applied to vacate it on Sept 7, and the Sept 11 order on the pending motions is not public |
Sixteen federal dockets in total carry the Sweepsteaks Limited name. Two notes on that count. It is CourtListener's, and it includes the New Jersey case entered twice under two division prefixes, plus the action Sweepsteaks itself brought in Chicago to collect an award from a player who had already sued it. It also counts only dockets carrying the Sweepsteaks name, so it leaves out the Stake cases captioned against other entities, such as the New York underage-gambling suit.
Massachusetts is not the only place a Stake.us arbitration award is under attack right now, and the other one runs the opposite way round. In Chicago the operator sued first, to turn an award into a money judgment against a player, and the player answered by cross-applying to vacate that award on September 7, 2026. Here the players moved first, on a docket they opened themselves. Two states, two directions, the same clause.
The Minnesota appeal is the one to watch alongside this. A judge there refused to send an identical fight to arbitration, the company appealed, and we covered what that appeal puts in play. Massachusetts went the other way on the same clause, and the fight there has now moved past whether the case belonged in arbitration at all and on to whether the award that came out of it can stand.
Is Stake.us still open to Massachusetts players?
Yes. Its own help centre article, dated July 10, 2026 and re-read on September 21, 2026, says the platform cannot accommodate players from 22 named states, and Massachusetts is not one of them. Nothing about your account changes today either, and we would rather say that than dress it up: this is not a payout freeze and not a state exit. Those 22 blocked states are Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia. We read that list against a newer Stake.us page that names 20 states and leaves Indiana and Maine out, so which of its own pages you land on changes the answer.
What the case does is show you the machinery you already agreed to. There is one concrete thing to do with that. Before you deposit anywhere, open the operator's terms and find the dispute-resolution section - clause 26 at Stake.us - and read it for two things: whether it hands the arbitrator the power to rule on the validity of the clause itself, which is what decided Deleon, and what it says about who pays the costs of an arbitration you lose. Neither appears on any marketing page, and the first one is the reason a Massachusetts judge never reached the question of whether Stake.us was operating legally in the state. Our guide to whether sweepstakes casinos are legal covers the state-law side; this clause is the other half.
Stake.us carries our lowest Trust and Safety score for exactly this reason, and our Stake.us review sets out why, scored against the 12 criteria we weight every brand on. If the legal file is your sticking point rather than the games, our Stake.us alternatives comparison lines up the closest matches and our ranked list of the best sweepstakes casinos shows which brands score highest overall.
Sources & documents
- CourtListener docket entries, Deleon v. Sweepsteaks Limited, D. Mass. 1:25-cv-11481 - every docket date, entry number and attachment page count above, read September 2, 2026 and re-read on the docket page on September 21, 2026
- Memorandum and Order Confirming Arbitral Award, October 16, 2026 - docket entry 41, 6 pages, downloaded and read in full on October 17, 2026; the source of the arbitrator's name, the award's scope and the identity of entry 38
- Memorandum and Order on Motion to Compel Arbitration, November 20, 2025 - 4 pages, downloaded and read in full; the source of the section 26.6 quotation and of the court's holding. The administrative closure and the 90-day status-report requirement are from a separate electronic order of the same date, docket entry 29, quoted from the docket text
- Class Action Complaint, May 23, 2025 - 31 pages; the class definition, the three counts and the prayer for relief are quoted from it
- CourtListener case search for Sweepsteaks Limited dockets - the 16 federal dockets this table was drawn from; re-run on September 21, 2026 and still returning 16
- Docket entries, Boyle v. Sweepsteaks Limited, C.D. Cal. 8:25-cv-00302 - Judge James V. Selna's May 19, 2025 in-chambers order granting the motion to compel arbitration and staying the case, the earliest of these
- Docket entries, Gardner v. Sweepsteaks Limited, D. Utah 2:25-cv-00994 - the July 10, 2026 docket text order and the plaintiff's notice of non-opposition
- Docket entries, Ridley v. Sweepsteaks Ltd., E.D. Va. 1:25-cv-02511 - the July 30, 2026 order compelling eight players to arbitrate
- Stake.us help centre, restricted states on the platform - dated July 10, 2026, read September 2, 2026 and re-read September 21, 2026, unchanged at 22 states
We did not put questions to Sweepsteaks Limited before publishing, and this piece makes no finding about the company. It reports what its own filings and a federal docket say. If the company responds, we will update it.
21+. Play responsibly. If gambling stops being fun, help is free and confidential: call or text 1-800-GAMBLER, or see our responsible gaming resources.
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Sources & documents
- storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.285111/gov.uscourts.mad.285111.41.0.pdf
- www.courtlistener.com/docket/73465394/sweepsteaks-limited-dba-stakeus-v-zawadzki/
- www.courtlistener.com/docket/73222837/zawadzki-v-sweepsteaks-limited/
- www.courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/search/?q=docket_id%3A70353080&type=rd&order_by=entry_date_filed+desc
- www.courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/search/?q=docket_id%3A70353080&type=d
- storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.285111/gov.uscourts.mad.285111.28.0.pdf
- storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.285111/gov.uscourts.mad.285111.1.0.pdf
- www.courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/search/?q=caseName%3A%22Sweepsteaks%22&type=d&order_by=dateFiled+desc
- www.courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/search/?q=docket_id%3A73653227&type=rd&order_by=entry_date_filed+desc
- www.courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/search/?q=docket_id%3A72076641&type=rd&order_by=entry_date_filed+desc
- www.courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/search/?q=docket_id%3A73593119&type=rd&order_by=entry_date_filed+desc
- www.courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/search/?q=docket_id%3A69642482&type=rd&order_by=entry_date_filed+desc
- www.courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/search/?q=docket_id%3A71860493&type=rd&order_by=entry_date_filed+desc
- www.courtlistener.com/api/rest/v4/search/?q=docket_id%3A72096700&type=rd&order_by=entry_date_filed+desc
- help.stake.us/en/articles/8570633-restricted-states-on-the-platform
- www.courtlistener.com/docket/70353080/deleon-v-sweepsteaks-limited/
- ecf.mad.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rss_outside.pl
Every factual claim in this article maps to one of the sources above - that is the publishing bar, not a goal.
FAQ
What does it mean to vacate an arbitration award?
It is a request to a federal judge to throw the arbitrator's decision out instead of enforcing it. The brief is not in the public file, but the court's October 16 order says the players argued that the court lacked power to confirm and that the arbitrator exceeded her powers under 9 U.S.C. § 10(a)(4). Both arguments failed.
Did the players lose the arbitration?
On the question it decided, yes. The October 16 order says the arbitrator found on July 30, 2026 that the arbitration agreement was binding, and that the award was limited to that question. The award itself is still not on the public docket.
Is Massachusetts banning sweepstakes casinos?
No. There is no Massachusetts sweepstakes statute, and the one 2026 bill that defined an "online sweepstakes game" was sent to study and died. This case runs on general consumer-protection and gambling-loss law instead. Our Massachusetts sweepstakes legality page has the current position.
Can I join this case?
No class has been certified and there is nothing to sign up for. If anyone asks you to pay to join a sweepstakes class action, that is not how any of this works.
Did the judge vacate the Stake.us arbitration award?
No. On October 16, 2026 Judge Stearns denied the motion to vacate and granted Sweepsteaks Limited's cross-motion to confirm the award in a six-page order (entry 41), which we cover in our report on the confirmed award. Before that, the docket moved on September 21, 2026 with two entries from that afternoon, entry 38, "Miscellaneous Relief", and entry 39, "Memorandum in Opposition to Motion". Both are bare clerk labels with no text, no named filing party and no public document, and the label on entry 39 does not say which motion it opposes, so we did not report the operator as having answered. The October 16 order has since confirmed that Sweepsteaks Limited opposed the motion and cross-moved to confirm on September 21.
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