Legal News
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YoungBoy Never Broke Again (a.k.a. NBA YoungBoy) has been sentenced to 23 months in federal prison, according to new documents filed in federal court on Tuesday (Dec. 10), followed by 60 months’ probation following his release. The sentence comes nearly four months after it was reported that the 25-year-old rapper, born Kentrell Gaulden, would plead […]
Attorneys for Jay-Z are claiming in new court filings that Tony Buzbee – the attorney behind a bombshell lawsuit accusing the superstar of raping a 13-year-old girl alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs – pressured a different alleged sex trafficking victim to falsely tie her case to Combs.
In court papers filed Tuesday, lawyers for Jay-Z (Shawn Carter) from the law firm Quinn Emanuel tell a federal judge they were approached on Monday by an unnamed woman who had “unsolicited” info to share about Buzbee’s firm.
The woman allegedly told Quinn Emanuel that after she contacted Buzbee’s firm in October about an unrelated celebrity sex abuse case, she was “pressed for a connection to Mr. Combs.” She also allegedly felt “directed and coached by Mr. Buzbee’s firm” to include “false” claims, including that she had been drugged and physically assaulted: “She felt forced to lie.”
“When the woman made clear she was unwilling to adapt to the narrative Mr. Buzbee’s firm laid out and wanted only to speak her truth, she was dropped as a client,” writes Mari Henderson, an attorney at Quinn who says she spoke to the alleged victim, in a sworn declaration. “This woman shared this information because she felt the conduct by Mr. Buzbee’s firm — specifically, to encourage lies — discredits those who are legitimate victims.”
The new filings did not reveal the woman’s name. Though the Quinn Emanuel attorneys say the woman disclosed her name to the firm, they says she currently “wishes to remain unnamed at this time for fear of retaliation by the Buzbee firm.”
In a statement to Billboard on Tuesday, Buzbee called the new accusations “ridiculous” and said the firm was pursuing “hundreds of cases” against people other than Combs. Though he said he could not comment on the specific case without the woman’s name, he strongly denied the allegations.
“We get a lot of calls from people who believe they are aggrieved but we just can’t help,” Buzbee said. “We certainly don’t need to ‘pressure’ anyone to pursue a case. We have plenty of cases. What we won’t do is pursue a case we perceive to be weak or insupportable.”
The new filings are the latest salvo from Jay-Z’s legal team in response to a bombshell lawsuit, filed by Buzbee’s firm late on Sunday, that alleges the rapper joined Combs in drugging and assaulting a 13-year-old girl in 2000 during an after-party following the MTV Video Music Awards.
Weeks ago, Jay-Z filed a preemptive lawsuit against Buzbee, accusing him of extortion over his threats to sue over “wildly false” claims. Then on Monday, they filed a scathing response to the new rape lawsuit, denying the allegations as “patently false” and arguing they were part of a “scheme” by Buzbee to extract settlements from innocent celebrities by falsely tying them to Diddy.
Buzbee has denied all such allegations, calling them a “coordinated and desperate effort” to avoid his client’s accusations: “We will not be bullied or intimidated by these shenanigans. And our clients won’t be silenced.” Buzbee has also filed his own lawsuit in Texas against Quinn Emanuel, accusing the firm of seeking to “intimidate” him and asking for a restraining order blocking their investigation; that request was denied by a Houston judge on Friday.
Over the past year, Combs has faced a flood of abuse accusations — starting with civil lawsuits and followed by a sweepingfederal indictment in September, in which prosecutors allege he ran a sprawling criminal operation for years aimed at satisfying his need for “sexual gratification.”
Weeks after Combs was arrested, Buzbee held a press conference in which he claimed to represent 120 individuals who had been victimized by Combs and threatened a flood of litigation. He has since filed more than 20 such civil lawsuits, all on behalf of unnamed Does.
In an updated complaint on Sunday, Buzbee added Jay-Z to one of those lawsuits. Calling the rapper a “longtime friend and collaborator” of Diddy, the case alleges that the victim was driven to the party and forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement before being given a drink that made her feel “woozy” and “lightheaded.” When she went to a bedroom to lie down, the lawsuit claims, she was assaulted by the two stars while an unnamed female celebrity looked on.
In Tuesday’s new filing, Jay-Z’s attorneys they say they were contacted on Monday by a Texas woman who had submitted a claim to Buzbee’s firm after seeing his October press conference. Though her allegations involved sex trafficking by different celebrities who were “entirely unrelated” to Combs or Carter, she allegedly told Quinn Emanuel that she felt pressured to tie them to Combs.
“After detailing her experiences to an attorney at Mr. Buzbee’s firm, he pressed for a connection to Mr. Combs, asking ‘at what point did you meet Diddy,’ even though she made clear that her case was unrelated to Mr. Combs,” writes Henderson in the affidavit, relaying her phone call with the alleged victim.
In addition to claiming she was press to link her case to Combs, the new filing says the woman also claimed Buzbee’s firm pressured her to pursue the claims anonymously as a “Jane Doe,” and to bring them as a civil lawsuit seeking damages rather than by contacting law enforcement over potential criminal charges.
In technical terms, the new filings came as added support for Monday’s initial response from Jay-Z’s team. In that motion, his attorneys had asked the judge to force his accuser to litigate the lawsuit under her real name, arguing it was necessary to mount a thorough defense of her claims.
“This information, which came to Quinn Emanuel unsolicited, is further evidence in support of Mr. Carter’s right to thoroughly investigate, test, and respond to the spurious allegations that have been leveled against him,” writes Jay-Z’s lead attorney Alex Spiro in Tuesday’s filings.
Jay-Z (Sean Carter) has filed his first response in court to a lawsuit accusing him of raping a 13-year-old girl in 2000 alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs, calling the case “extortionate” and arguing that the accuser should be required to litigate such “heinous allegations” under her real name.
In a motion filed less than a day after the shocking case was filed, Carter’s attorneys called the accusations “patently false” and part of “campaign of extortion” by attorney Tony Buzbee, a Texas attorney who has filed a slew of cases against Combs and threatened dozens more.
Allowing Buzbee’s clients to proceed under “Jane Doe” pseudonyms is a just a tactic in a “scheme” to extract settlements from innocent celebrities by falsely tying them to Diddy, Carter’s attorneys argue in the new filing — effectively allowing the attorney to “smear defendant’s good name” while his clients “hide beyond the shield of anonymity.”
“Mr. Carter should not have to defend himself in the brightest of spotlights against an accuser who hides in complete darkness,” writes Jay-Z’s attorney Alex Spiro. “Mr. Carter deserves to know the identity of the person who is effectively accusing him — in sensationalized, publicity-hunting fashion — of criminal conduct, demanding massive financial compensation, and tarnishing a reputation earned over decades.”
Plaintiffs in sexual abuse lawsuits can sometimes proceed under pseudonyms if there’s a strong risk of retaliation, but such treatment is granted in only rare cases. Already, in several of the other civil actions filed against Combs, judges have required Doe accusers to disclose their names, with one ruling that anonymity is “the exception and not the rule” and another citing the “fundamental unfairness” of allowing only one side to remain hidden.
In his filing on Monday, Carter’s attorneys cite those earlier rulings and argue that Buzbee and his accuser have not met any of the key requirements to litigate her case under a “Doe” pseudonym. In technical terms, he wants the judge to force her to reveal her name, or dismiss the case entirely.
“Mr. Carter now is entitled to defend himself against these allegations with benefit of all the protections and mechanisms available to defendants,” Spiro writes in Monday’s motion. “To be sure, attorney Buzbee’s game has been to prevent Mr. Carter from defending himself while punching below the belt. Today, that game is at an end and Mr. Carter’s defense has begun — starting with plaintiff’s unmasking.”
In an email to Billboard on Monday, Buzbee responded to Carter’s motion by saying, “I’m not doing a play by play commentary to every pleading filed in court. We will respond in due course.”
Combs has faced a flood of abuse accusations over the past year, starting with civil lawsuits and followed by a bombshell federal indictment in September, in which prosecutors allege he ran a sprawling criminal operation for years aimed at satisfying his need for “sexual gratification.”
Weeks after the indictment, Buzbee joined the fray by holding a press conference in which he claimed to represent 120 individuals who had been victimized by Combs and threatened a flood of litigation. He has since filed more than a dozen such lawsuits, all on behalf of unnamed Doe plaintiffs.
In a shocking complaint filed Sunday evening, Buzbee added Jay-Z as a defendant to an earlier lawsuit that had previously named only Combs. Calling the rapper a “longtime friend and collaborator” of Diddy, the lawsuit alleges Combs and Carter drugged and assaulted the victim during an afterparty following the MTV Video Music Awards in 2000.
After being driven to the party and forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement, the lawsuit says, the plaintiff was given a drink that made her feel “woozy” and “lightheaded.” After she went to a bedroom to lie down, the lawsuit claims, she was assaulted by the two stars.
“Another celebrity stood by and watched as Combs and Carter took turns assaulting the minor,” the lawsuit reads. “Many others were present at the afterparty, but did nothing to stop the assault.”
The lawsuit came weeks after Buzbee was sued for extortion by an unnamed celebrity who claimed he was threatening to unleash “wildly false horrific allegations” linked to Diddy if the anonymous bigwig didn’t pay up. In Monday’s filing, attorneys for Carter confirmed speculation that the mystery case had in fact been filed by Jay-Z.
“Mr. Carter sought to expose Attorney Buzbee’s latest extortion scheme in a California lawsuit … after receiving a demand letter from Attorney Buzbee,” Spiro writes in the new motion. “Because Mr. Carter called upon the courts rather than paying, he has now been sued. So be it.”
Drake, by common consensus, has been a smart and savvy businessman over the course of his music career. So some in the music business have been puzzled following the megastar rapper’s widely ridiculed legal filing last week against his own label, Universal Music Group (UMG), as well as Spotify, for an illegal “scheme” to boost the popularity of Kendrick Lamar‘s May 2024 diss track “Not Like Us.” They wonder if the move was a strategy for a potential future contract negotiation.
“Drake could be creating his own leverage by filing the suit against UMG,” says Josh Binder, an attorney who represents pop and hip-hop stars including Gunna, Marshmello, Lisa of BLACKPINK and Ivan Cornejo. “Most lawsuits are settled pre-litigation. My gut says this isn’t going to a jury. Drake could be using the suit to alter his existing deal.”
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Although Binder has no inside information on Drake’s filing, which alleges UMG “launched a campaign to manipulate and saturate the streaming services and airwaves” in its effort to amplify Lamar’s Drake diss track, he says the case could drag out and cause bad publicity for both Drake and UMG: “Settling it would, at a certain point, be worthwhile to both parties.”
In the Nov. 25 filing, Drake alleged that UMG used bots and other means to boost the prominence of “Not Like Us” on streaming services; the rapper’s attorneys accused the label of giving Spotify a deal on licensing rates in exchange for recommending the song to users who’d played non-Lamar tracks. They also alleged a civil violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, frequently employed against organized crime, as well as deceptive business practices and false advertising — including allegedly paying Apple to have Siri steer users to the Lamar track. The legal action states that the label “conspired with and paid currently unknown parties to use ‘bots’ to artificially inflate the spread of ‘Not Like Us’ and deceive consumers into believing the song was more popular than it was in reality.”
In a second filing the following day, which alleged payola to iHeartMedia to boost the song at radio, he went even further, saying UMG knew Lamar was defaming Drake by “falsely” accusing him of being a “certified pedophile,” yet released the track anyway. This filing reads in part: “UMG designed, financed and then executed a plan to turn ‘Not Like Us’ into a viral mega-hit with the intent of using the spectacle of harm to Drake and his businesses to drive consumer hysteria and, of course, massive revenues.”
Of the legal filings, Universal Music released a statement saying that the “suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue,” and several music-business attorneys echoed that sentiment to Billboard. “I can’t believe this is anything more than a publicity stunt,” says Howard King, who has represented Metallica, Dr. Dre and Pharrell in high-profile cases. “I don’t see how Drake has standing to challenge the record industry for doing what he knows they also do for him — using all available resources to promote an artist’s profile and music.”
But others in the business agreed Drake could be using the widespread publicity he generated from last week’s legal actions as a negotiating point for a future record deal negotiation with UMG. (Drake initially signed with Young Money, an imprint distributed by Universal-owned Republic Records, then later became a Republic artist.) One source tells Billboard that Drake’s latest deal, signed in 2021 and described as “LeBron-sized” by Variety at the time, isn’t far from expiring, and the most logical explanation for Drake damaging his reputation so publicly with the legal filings was to communicate his unhappiness to UMG and aim for a lucrative new deal, or even equity in UMG.
“It’s possible that it was done to have some leverage against his label,” says Gandhar Savur, a New York music attorney, adding that he has no knowledge of Drake or UMG’s affairs. “However, my initial impression was that he’s just trying to publicly discredit the track.”
Drake is one of the streaming era’s most successful stars, having passed the 50 billion mark in 2018. Lamar’s latest album, GNX, scored 364 million Spotify streams in its first week, in late November, but Drake holds the record for first-week hip-hop albums, with 589 million for 2018’s Scorpion and 497 million for 2021’s Certified Lover Boy.
If contract negotiations with UMG were to break down, sources say, an artist of Drake’s stature could follow the lead of Kanye West, who did not renew his contract with Def Jam/Universal after it expired and has since released albums on his own label via DIY distribution services, scoring a two-week No. 1 in February with Vultures 1 and a No. 2 debut in August with Vultures 2. “He could move forward without a deal,” King says of Drake. “He can certainly distribute the music without a label, especially domestically, and would need to have a management team capable of promotion and marketing. Of course, he would give up the big advance and have to fund production costs himself.”
Drake, however, as a viable global superstar, is in a different situation from Ye, whose prior antisemitic comments made getting into business with him a publicity headache for most labels. Binder doesn’t see the dominant rapper following West’s DIY path. “I would imagine [Drake] would want the infrastructure of a label,” he says.
Jay-Z (Sean Carter) was accused in a civil lawsuit filed Sunday of raping a 13-year-old girl in 2000 alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs — allegations that he immediately called a “blackmail attempt” filed by a “fraud” lawyer.
In a complaint filed in New York federal court, the unnamed Jane Doe alleges Combs and Carter drugged and assaulted her during an after-party following the MTV Video Music Awards. The case came as an updated version of an earlier lawsuit that had previously named only Combs.
The allegations were filed by Tony Buzbee, a Texas attorney who has filed a slew of lawsuits against Combs in recent months and has warned that he reps dozens more alleged victims. Earlier this month, Buzbee was sued for extortion by an unnamed celebrity who claimed he was threatening to unleash “wildly false horrific allegations” linked to Diddy if the anonymous bigwig didn’t pay up.
In a response statement on Sunday evening, Carter strongly denied the allegations and called the lawsuit a “blackmail attempt” aimed at securing a settlement. He called Buzbee a “fraud,” a “deplorable human” and an “ambulance chaser in a cheap suit.”
“You have made a terrible error in judgement thinking that all ‘celebrities’ are the same,” Carter said. “I’m not from your world. I’m a young man who made it out of the project of Brooklyn. We don’t play these types of games. We have very strict codes and honor. We protect children, you seem to exploit people for personal gain. Only your network of conspiracy theorists … will believe the idiotic claims you have levied against me that, if not for the seriousness surrounding harm to kids, would be laughable.”
“I look forward to showing you just how different I am,” Carter ended the statement.
Combs has faced a flood of abuse accusations over the past year, starting with civil lawsuits and followed by a bombshell federal indictment in September, in which prosecutors allege he ran a sprawling criminal operation for years aimed at satisfying his need for “sexual gratification.”
Weeks after the indictment, Buzbee joined the fray by holding a press conference in which he claimed to represent 120 individuals who had been victimized by Combs and threatened a flood of litigation. He has since filed more than a dozen such lawsuits, all on behalf of unnamed Doe plaintiffs.
In the new case, Buzbee calls Jay-Z a “longtime friend and collaborator” of Combs. He claims that after the alleged victim was driven to the afterparty and forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement, she was given a drink that made her feel “woozy” and “lightheaded.” When she went into a bedroom to lie down, Buzbee claims she was assaulted by the two stars.
“Another celebrity stood by and watched as Combs and Carter took turns assaulting the minor,” the lawsuit reads. “Many others were present at the afterparty, but did nothing to stop the assault.”
In his response statement, Jay-Z questioned why allegations that were “so heinous in nature” had not been filed as a criminal case: “Whomever would commit such a crime against a minor should be locked away, would you not agree?” He also vowed to never settle with Buzbee, saying he would “expose you for the fraud you are in a VERY public fashion.”
“My only heartbreak is for my family,” Carter said. “My wife and I will have to sit our children down, one of whom is at the age where her friends will surely see the press and ask questions about the nature of these claims, and explain the cruelty and greed of people. I mourn yet another loss of innocence.”
A federal judge is refusing to dismiss a civil lawsuit accusing electronic producer Bassnectar of sexually abusing three underage girls, sending the long-running case to a jury trial.
In a ruling Thursday (Dec. 6), Judge Aleta Trauger dismissed some aspects of the case but said that the overall lawsuit against the DJ (whose real name is Lorin Ashton) would be resolved by a jury of his peers. A trial is currently scheduled for February.
Attorneys for Bassnectar had made various arguments for why the case should be tossed out, including that he hadn’t known how old the accusers were and that they had lied about their ages. But in her order, Judge Trauger was unswayed.
Ruling on claims made by plaintiff Jenna Houston, the judge noted that she was “only sixteen” when they met and that Ashton was “obviously able to observe her in person,” meaning a jury could find that he had “recklessly disregarded the fact that Houston was underage during the first thirteen months of their sexual relationship.”
The judge cited deposition testimony from Ashton — in which he agreed that Houston “does not look like she’s 19 years old” in an old photo she allegedly emailed him, but later also said she looked “like 19, 20, 21” when they first met.
“A jury must resolve the question of whether Ashton deliberately disregarded obvious facts from which he should have known that Houston was still a minor when they met,” the judge wrote. “A reasonable jury could believe — based on photographs of Houston taken at or around the time she met Ashton and Ashton’s confusing testimony when he was confronted with such photos — that no reasonable person would have believed she was eighteen or older.”
Thursday’s order came more than three years after the three women — Rachel Ramsbottom, Alexis Bowling and Houston — filed their lawsuit, accusing Ashton of using his “power and influence to groom and ultimately sexually victimize underage girls.”
The lawsuit, which accuses Ashton of sex trafficking, child pornography and negligence, claims that the star would invite minors to his shows, bring them to a hotel room and provide “large sums of cash and other items of value” in exchange for sex.
In her ruling Thursday, Judge Trauger tossed out certain elements of those allegations. She ruled that Ramsbottom in particular had failed to show that she received any payments after she turned 18 — meaning she could not accuse him of sex trafficking after that point. And she rejected claims that the DJ had used “force, fraud or coercion” on any of his alleged victims.
“The psychological force she alleges he exerted over her amounts to nothing other than a desire to please a famous man she clearly admired and whose approval she sought,” the judge wrote of Bowling’s accusations.
Ditto for Houston: “The conduct she identifies as coercive — conduct that allegedly manipulated her into loving and trusting him, making her afraid to do anything that would cause her to lose his affection — does not qualify,” the judge wrote. “Heartbreak is simply not the form of harm envisioned by the sex-trafficking statute.”
But the ruling still leaves Ashton facing most of the lawsuit’s allegations, including claims that he had sex trafficked them as minors by paying them in return for sex. The DJ’s attorneys strongly deny that anything given to the women was a payment, but the judge said a jury might see otherwise.
“There is a question of fact as to whether the ‘travel money,’ free concert tickets, and free airfare Houston received from Ashton were causally related to Ashton’s allegedly enticing Houston to have sex with him and to provide her the means of traveling to see him again while she was underage in order to have sex,” the judge wrote.
In a statement to Billboard on Friday, the lead attorney for the accusers, M. Stewart Ryan, said: “Our clients are very happy that the Court agreed with us that this case must be heard by a jury. Rachel, Alexis, and Jenna all look forward to their day in court, yet another step on their journey to justice in this case.”
Representatives for Ashton did not immediately return requests for comment on Friday.
UPDATE: This story was updated at 2:03 pm EST on Dec. 6 with a statement from an attorney for the plaintiffs.
A federal appeals court panel on Friday upheld a law that could lead to a ban on TikTok in a few short months, handing a resounding defeat to the popular social media platform as it fights for its survival in the U.S.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the law, which requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance or be banned by mid-January, is constitutional, rebuffing TikTok’s challenge that the statute ran afoul of the First Amendment and unfairly targeted the platform.
“The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” said the court’s opinion. “Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”
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TikTok and ByteDance — another plaintiff in the lawsuit — are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump, who tried to ban TikTok during his first term and whose Justice Department would have to enforce the law, said during the presidential campaign that he is now against a TikTok ban and would work to “save” the social media platform.
The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, culminated a years-long saga in Washington over the short-form video-sharing app, which the government sees as a national security threat due to its connections to China.
The U.S. has said it’s concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials have also warned the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.
However, a significant portion of the government’s information in the case has been redacted and hidden from the public as well as the two companies.
TikTok, which sued the government over the law in May, has long denied it could be used by Beijing to spy on or manipulate Americans. Its attorneys have accurately pointed out that the U.S. hasn’t provided evidence to show that the company handed over user data to the Chinese government, or manipulated content for Beijing’s benefit in the U.S. They have also argued the law is predicated on future risks, which the Department of Justice has emphasized pointing in part to unspecified action it claims the two companies have taken in the past due to demands from the Chinese government.
Friday’s ruling came after the appeals court panel heard oral arguments in September.
Some legal experts said at the time that it was challenging to read the tea leaves on how the judges would rule.
In a court hearing that lasted more than two hours, the panel – composed of two Republican and one Democrat appointed judges – appeared to grapple with how TikTok’s foreign ownership affects its rights under the Constitution and how far the government could go to curtail potential influence from abroad on a foreign-owned platform.
The judges pressed Daniel Tenny, a Department of Justice attorney, on the implications the case could have on the First Amendment. But they also expressed some skepticism at TikTok’s arguments, challenging the company’s attorney – Andrew Pincus – on whether any First Amendment rights preclude the government from curtailing a powerful company subject to the laws and influence of a foreign adversary.
In parts of their questions about TikTok’s ownership, the judges cited wartime precedent that allows the U.S. to restrict foreign ownership of broadcast licenses and asked if the arguments presented by TikTok would apply if the U.S. was engaged in war.
To assuage concerns about the company’s owners, TikTok says it has invested more than $2 billion to bolster protections around U.S. user data.
The company also argues the government’s broader concerns could have been resolved in a draft agreement it provided the Biden administration more than two years ago during talks between the two sides. It has blamed the government for walking away from further negotiations on the agreement, which the Justice Department argues is insufficient.
Attorneys for the two companies have claimed it’s impossible to divest the platform commercially and technologically. They also say any sale of TikTok without the coveted algorithm – the platform’s secret sauce that Chinese authorities would likely block under any divesture plan – would turn the U.S. version of TikTok into an island disconnected from other global content.
Still, some investors, including Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire Frank McCourt, have expressed interest in purchasing the platform. Both men said earlier this year that they were launching a consortium to purchase TikTok’s U.S. business.
This week, a spokesperson for McCourt’s Project Liberty initiative, which aims to protect online privacy, said unnamed participants in their bid have made informal commitments of more than $20 billion in capital.
TikTok’s lawsuit was consolidated with a second legal challenge brought by several content creators — for which the company is covering legal costs — as well as a third one filed on behalf of conservative creators who work with a nonprofit called BASED Politics Inc.
If TikTok appeals and the courts continue to uphold the law, it would fall on Trump’s Justice Department to enforce it and punish any potential violations with fines. The penalties would apply to app stores that would be prohibited from offering TikTok, and internet hosting services that would be barred from supporting it.
Village People singer Victor Willis might be threatening to sue news outlets that describe his song “Y.M.C.A” as a “gay anthem,” but legal experts say such lawsuits would likely be a “nonstarter.”
In a social media post on Monday defending President-elect Donald Trump’s use of the iconic disco song at his campaign rallies, Willis also sharply denied that he had intended the track to be aimed at the gay community — calling it a “false assumption” and “completely misguided.”
But he also went a step further than that, warning that next month his team would “start suing each and every news organization” that refers to “Y.M.C.A” as a “gay anthem,” calling such a description “defamatory.”
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“The song is not really a gay anthem other than certain people falsely suggesting that it is,” Willis wrote in the post. “And this must stop because it is damaging to the song.”
Released by the Village People in October 1978, “Y.M.C.A” eventually reached No. 2 on the Hot 100 and was emblematic of the late-1970s disco craze. The buoyant track and its trademark alphabetic dance have become one of music’s enduring phenomenons, blasted for years at sporting events, wedding dance floors and, of late, Trump rallies.
According to The Financial Times, the song has been “widely interpreted as a gay anthem” for years: “This is no great stretch for a song encouraging ‘young men’ to ‘find many ways to have a good time,’” the outlet wrote. Beyond the lyrics, the band’s 1977 debut album made clear references to gay cultural touchstones, and the music video for “Y.M.C.A” was itself filmed in front of the famed New York City gay bar The Ramrod.
“‘Y.M.C.A.’ was more than a hit record,” reads a 2021 article released by the Library of Congress. “It was a cultural milestone: a world anthem built on, for, and about gay life and sensibilities that was, nevertheless, fully embraced by mainstream audiences.”
In an oral history of the song released by Spin in 2008, members of the band argued over whether such interpretations had been behind design — with Randy Jones (the cowboy) saying it was “not intended as a gay anthem” but David Hodo (the construction worker) saying that it “certainly has a gay origin.”
Willis has long denied any such connotation to his lyrics, saying in 2017 that “it was not written to be a gay song because of the simple fact I’m not gay.” And this isn’t the first time he’s threatened to sue to prove it: In 2020, amid a similar dustup over Trump, Willis warned that he would “sue the next newspaper that falsely claim my lyrics are somehow about gay sex.” It does not appear that any case was ever filed.
With such threats now resurfaced, it’s fair to ask: Can Willis really sue news outlets over something like this? Sure — this is America, and anybody can file a lawsuit over just about anything. But top attorneys who specialize in media law say that if he does so, such claims would face serious obstacles in court.
“Mr. Willis’ threatened libel claim would be a nonstarter for numerous reasons,” says Adam I. Rich, a music and free speech attorney at the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine.
“The Media Was Put On Notice To Cut It Out”
In his Facebook post — which has an all-caps header that says the song is “NOT REALLY A GAY ANTHEM” — Willis isn’t entirely clear on exactly what he plans to sue about, or how he plans to do it.
At times, he seems fixated on the “gay anthem” label itself, saying he and his wife will sue any outlet that “falsely refers” to the song as such. At other points, he appears more concerned about the perceived meaning of his lyrics, denying that he wrote the song as a “a message to gay people” and complaining that the lyrics have been misconstrued as references to gay sex or “illicit activity” at YMCAs. Confusingly, however, he also says, “I don’t mind that gays think of the song as their anthem.”
To understand more, Billboard reached out to Karen Willis, Victor’s wife and manager, who will purportedly be filing such lawsuits. In a series of emails, she said that the threatened litigation would target any media outlet that “infers that ‘Y.M.C.A.’ is a gay anthem based on its association with illicit gay activities at the Y,” calling such a statement “defamatory on its face.”
“Victor has a right not to have his lyrics twisted outside of the true meaning of his words, especially in a manner that would bring shame or scorn to him,” she wrote. “This is especially true when he can show that the media was put on notice to cut it out. Stop it.”
Will these lawsuits target any media report that refers to the song as a “gay anthem,” even if it makes no reference to the lyrics and merely cites the song’s well-established place in cultural history? Or will they merely target articles that make direct claims about what Victor intended his lyrics to mean?
Karen Willis wouldn’t exactly say. “I think if they simply said that the song is popular in the gay community, [I] see no liability there,” she wrote. But she also repeatedly argued the only reason the song is considered a “gay anthem” in the first place is a perceived hidden meaning of the lyrics.
“The single basis for the claim that ‘Y.M.C.A.’ is a gay anthem is that the lyrics suggests such,” Willis wrote, before later adding: “If the lyrics are not wrongfully believed to be the source of the gay anthem claim, the song would not be referred to as a gay anthem.”
“Squarely Protected by the First Amendment”
If the plan is to sue for defamation, that means that Willis believes that statements linking his song to the gay community are both factually false and damaging to him. It’s easy to make those accusations in a Facebook post, but actually winning such claims in the American court system is pretty hard, thanks to the U.S. Constitution and its robust protections for free speech.
For starters, to prove such an accusation — also known as libel — Willis would need to show that an offending news outlet had made a statement of fact that’s capable of being proven false, and not merely a statement of opinion that he disagrees with — a form of speech safeguarded by the First Amendment.
While explicit statements about his lyrical intentions might cross a line, experts say that merely describing the song as a “gay anthem” is clearly the kind of broad opinion that’s shielded from defamation litigation. And even if the “anthem” label could be proven false, would Willis actually be able to do so?
“A court would almost certainly find that the label ‘gay anthem’ is nonactionable opinion, squarely protected by the First Amendment,” says Rich, the media lawyer. “And regardless of what Mr. Willis now claims to have meant when he wrote it, he would bear the burden of proving that the song isn’t a gay anthem — that is about as likely as a young man not having a fun time at the YMCA.”
That skeptical view was seconded by Dori Hanswirth, a First Amendment attorney at the law firm Arnold & Porter, who cited the Village People’s “iconic status in the gay community” and the appearance of “a gay landmark in the music video.” In his Facebook post, even Willis admitted that the group’s self-titled debut album, released a year before “Y.M.C.A.,” had been “totally about gay life.”
“Calling ‘Y.M.C.A.’ a gay anthem is an opinion,” Hanswirth says. “To the extent the reference is considered a factual statement rather than an opinion, it is probably true. And truth is a complete defense to any defamation claim.”
Another potential legal roadblock for Willis’ planned lawsuits: Is a connection to the gay community even capable of being legally defamatory? Put another way: Is it really outright damaging if someone says your song was embraced by gay listeners, or that it made allusions to gay culture?
That might have been an easy argument to make in 1978, but after decades of hard-fought progress on LGBTQ+ rights, it’s a harder one to make in 2024. For example, a New York state appeals court issued a ruling in 2021 overturning a decades-old precedent holding that falsely calling someone gay was automatically defamatory, citing a “profound and notable transformation of cultural attitudes.”
“If the songwriter is arguing that it is defamatory to say that he wrote a song that became a gay anthem, I don’t see a basis for a claim there,” Hanswirth says. “It is generally not defamatory to say that someone is gay; thus, it would not be defamatory to say that someone wrote a song that is viewed as a celebration of gay male culture.”
Another, even more basic problem for any lawsuit against media outlets is the fact that Willis is a “public figure” — a status that makes it very hard to win a defamation lawsuit. Under U.S. Supreme Court precedents, he’d need to prove that offending statement (either calling his song a “gay anthem” or claiming a hidden lyrical meaning) was not only factually false, but that the writer knew it was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.
That requirement (known as “actual malice”) has long made it extremely challenging for prominent people to sue for libel over anything but the most egregious cases. “That is a very difficult standard to meet,” Rich says. And it’s by design: if not sharply limited, defamation lawsuit could allow government officials, business execs and other powerful people to use the courts to stifle the kind of open exchange of ideas that the First Amendment is supposed to protect.
Of course, none of this is to say that Willis and his wife can’t file lawsuits come January. Everyone is entitled to their day in court, and if he wants to spend the money on lawyers and court fees, he can certainly test out his defamation theories. But experts don’t expect the courts to be sympathetic.
“I think the song has universal popularity and has also become symbolic of gay male culture from the 1970’s. Two things can be true,” Hanswirth says. “Is it a gay anthem? If you think it is, yes.”
In March, Tennessee became the first state to modernize its laws for the age of artificial intelligence. The ELVIS (Ensuring Likeness, Voice, and Image Security) Act — which updates the state’s right of publicity and likeness rights to prevent AI companies from creating unauthorized deepfake vocal imitations — represented the culmination of efforts from across the industry, including those of record labels and music publishers. But it was Todd Dupler, Recording Academy vp of advocacy and public policy, who gave the law its distinctly rock’n’roll name.
Coming up with catchy titles for laws is something of an extreme sport in legislative circles — think of the DREAM Act (for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors), or, in music, the CLASSICS (Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, and Important Contributions to Society) Act, which became part of the Music Modernization Act. Like these subjects, AI is complicated, so getting positive attention helps. And “in Tennessee, there’s no better way to capture attention than Elvis,” says Dupler, who has worked in the academy’s policy department since 2012 and was promoted to his current position in September 2023.
Dupler’s role in pushing for the Tennessee law is just one prominent example of how the Recording Academy is increasingly taking its lobbying work for music creators beyond Washington, D.C., to various state capitals. “The ELVIS Act became a model that state legislators and members of Congress looked at,” Dupler says. (Sometimes state laws lead to change in D.C.) “Our focus is to be a high-impact organization, to be a thought leader on issues that matter.”
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Right now, AI is the biggest issue of all. “It’s the issue that most of the community feels the most concern about,” Dupler says. It also involves a range of laws, including both federal copyright law (under which the major labels are suing generative AI companies Suno and Udio for using their recordings to train their software) and state law likeness rights (the legality of creating a “Fake Drake” or a similar vocal imitation). That’s why the academy, along with other music rights-holder organizations, is pushing for stronger statutes in statehouses, plus backing the federal NO FAKES (Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe) Act. (The bill, which has been introduced in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, now has widespread support; there will be attempts to attach it to must-pass legislation in the current “lame duck” session before Christmas, but it seems more likely that it will be reintroduced next year.)
By the beginning of this year, AI loomed so large that the House Judiciary Committee had a “field hearing” about it in Los Angeles two days before the 2024 Grammy Awards, where country singer Lainey Wilson and Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. testified. “We wanted to use the spotlight of the show to draw attention to the issue,” Dupler says. “We embraced this idea of protecting human creativity.” The hearing helped raise the visibility of the Tennessee law, which in turn became a model for other bills around the country.
In February, Mason spoke at a House Judiciary Committee field hearing in Los Angeles on artificial intelligence.
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The academy’s other two advocacy priorities are banning the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials and regulating the secondary ticketing market, especially to mandate transparency. Unlike copyright law, which is federal, both of these issues involve a mix of federal and state legislation. The admissibility of lyrics as evidence can be a matter of federal or state law, depending on the charges; ticketing laws have come from statehouses, as well as Washington, D.C.
The academy launched its advocacy division in the late ’90s, and what began as a modest attempt to help shape policy for the digital age has grown into a significant operation that lobbies for creators, often along with the RIAA and the National Music Publishers’ Association, which represent the recording and publishing businesses, respectively. The academy now runs an annual Grammys on the Hill event to recognize artists and legislators (including, this past year, Sheryl Crow and Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and John Cornyn, R-Texas), and a Music Advocacy Day in which academy members visit the regional offices of national legislators to talk to them about their policy ideas. (This year drew 2,100 members.) In 2024, the academy also organized seven State Capitol Advocacy Days, twice as many as in past years, reflecting the importance of state law to its priorities.
Although the nature of procedural rules for criminal cases isn’t a core issue for the music industry, the academy and other music organizations have pushed to limit the use of lyrics as evidence on free expression grounds. “We engage in issues that affect the music business,” Dupler says, “and members and local chapters bring issues to us.”
In September 2022, California became the first state to limit the use of lyrics as evidence in its Decriminalizing Artistic Expression Act, after the practice gained attention in Young Thug’s RICO trial. But bills in other states have stalled, and the federal RAP (Restoring Artistic Protection) Act, which would apply to trials for federal offenses, has yet to pass. “That has to be reintroduced,” Dupler says. “And we’ll continue to focus on both AI and lyrics on a federal level.”
Ticketing — the other big issue for the academy — has become controversial and seems likely to remain so, especially now that Donald Trump’s election has thrown into doubt the future of the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Live Nation. (The new attorney general will decide if and how to continue that case.) The state ticketing bills the academy is lobbying for are simpler and have more to do with requiring secondary sellers to disclose extra charges and refrain from offering tickets they do not yet own. There’s similar federal legislation, known as the Fans First Act in the Senate and the TICKET (Transparency In Charges for Key Events Ticketing) Act. Dupler didn’t come up with that name — but he’s prepared to spread the word once the bill is reintroduced in 2025.
This story appears in the Dec. 7, 2024, issue of Billboard.
The creators of the hit Broadway play Stereophonic have reached a settlement to resolve a copyright lawsuit claiming they stole elements of the show from a memoir about the infamous recording of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
The deal will resolve a case, filed last month by music producer Ken Caillat, that called playwright David Adjmi’s Tony Award-winning show an “unauthorized adaptation” and “willful infringement” of the 2012 book Making Rumours, a memoir detailing his work on the famed album.
In a court filing Tuesday, attorneys for both Caillat and Adjmi said that they had “resolved the dispute in principle as to all claims and defendants, and are working to commit their agreement to writing.” And in a brief order, the judge seemed pleased that the case would not be moving forward.
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“I cannot say I am surprised by this news but it is the wisest resolution for all concerned,” Judge Colleen McMahon wrote. “Feel free to come in and (hopefully) memorialize the settlement [at a hearing later this month].”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed in court filings, and neither side immediately returned requests for comment.
Stereophonic debuted on Broadway last fall, eventually winning five Tony Awards including best play, best direction of a play and best featured actor in a play. Featuring the music of Arcade Fire’s Will Butler, it tells the story of a fictional rock band struggling to record an album in the mid-1970s.
Critics quickly noted the similarities to the difficult process behind Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, which featured high tensions and heavy drug usage. A reviewer for the Wall Street Journal said the play was “fictionalizing Fleetwood Mac”; another critic said the play “isn’t literally about Fleetwood Mac, but c’mon.”
In their Oct. 2 lawsuit, Caillat and co-author Steven Stiefel said the hit play “presents a nearly identical story arc as Making Rumours,” told from the same perspective of a sound engineer in a recording studio, about five characters who are “undeniably analogous to the members of Fleetwood Mac.”
“Stereophonic is undoubtedly a play based on plaintiffs’ memoir Making Rumours because substantial similarities exist between the two works, a reality that has been independently confirmed by those familiar with plaintiffs’ book who have also had the opportunity to review the play,” the duo’s lawyers wrote at the time.
If the case had gone to trial, it would have presented tricky legal questions. Under U.S. law, historical events cannot be monopolized under copyrights, and nobody can claim exclusive ownership over the real story behind the making of Rumours. But specific creative elements of how such a story is told can be protected by copyrights, and film, TV and stage producers often license non-fiction books as the basis for their works.
Caillat and Stiefel claimed that Adjmi copied those exact kinds of creative choices when he created his play, saying show depicted not just a historical event but did so “as it is described in Making Rumours.”