A Los Angeles judge says hip-hop powerhouse Top Dawg Entertainment must face allegations that the company “doxxed” two women after they sued the record label for sexual harassment and assault.
In a ruling Wednesday, Judge Michael E. Whitaker refused to dismiss allegations that the company broke California state law by revealing the identities of the two accusers in a response statement to the media that called the lawsuit a “shakedown.”
Top Dawg had argued that the statement was fair game because lawyers for the two women spoke the media first, but the judge was unpersuaded.
“Defendants argue that it was plaintiffs who initiated the inflammatory press release and it was necessary for them to publicly respond and correct the record,” the judge writes. “Plaintiff’s correctly point out, however, that publicly revealing their true identities was not a necessary part of correcting the narrative in the public record.”
In a statement to Billboard on Thursday, Top Dawg’s attorney Allison Hart vowed to challenge the ruling further: “We have the utmost respect for the court, but believe that yesterday’s decision that our clients were not allowed to disclose the plaintiffs’ names was in error, and we intend to immediately appeal and continue vigorously defending against plaintiffs’ bogus claims.”
An attorney for the plaintiffs, meanwhile, praised the court’s decision: “Our clients believe the Court’s ruling speaks for itself, and are gratified the case has been set for trial,” said Shounak S. Dharap. “They look forward to presenting all the evidence to a jury of their peers.”
Using the pseudonyms Jane Doe and Jane Roe, the two women filed a lawsuit in December against Top Dawg, a top hip-hop label best known for helping to launch the careers of Kendrick Lamar, SZA and Doechii. Doe, a public relations staffer, says she faced “inappropriate workplace behavior,” including harassment and assault, as well as unpaid wages; Roe, a friend of a Top Dawg artist, says she was “sexually harassed twice by TDE employees.”
In addition to the company itself, the lawsuit names execs Anthony “Moosa” Tiffith Jr. and Brandon Tiffith, the sons of TDE founder Anthony “Top” Tiffith, Sr., as defendants.
“TDE’s leadership knew about these instances of sexual abuse, as well as the failure to properly compensate Ms. Doe, yet took no action to prevent further violations, discipline the individuals involved, or offer supportive services to plaintiffs,” their lawyers wrote.
Two months after the case was filed, lawyers for the women issued a press release publicizing their allegations. During the resulting media coverage, Top Dawg issued a strongly-worded denial, claiming the allegations were “fabricated” and filed by women seeking “ten minutes of fame.” Along with those denunciations, it also included the women’s real names, which had been unknown at the time.
A week later, attorneys for the accusers added a new claim to their lawsuit, alleging that the press statement had illegally released the womens’ names. They claimed the move violated a recently-enacted California statute that allows people to sue when they’ve been doxxed – a modern term for maliciously releasing someone’s identity on the internet.
Seeking to dismiss that new accusation, Top Dawg argued that the two women never had a legal right to sue under the “Jane” pseudonyms in the first place. But Judge Whitaker suggests that call had not been Top Dawg’s to make on its own.
“The court need not decide whether plaintiffs’ would ultimately have been able to proceed under pseudonyms or would have been ordered to proceed under their real names,” the judge says. “The court and parties were deprived of that answer when defendants revealed Plaintis’ true names in a public news article, mooting the issue. Thus, at the time the statement was made, it revealed plaintiffs’ true identities, which were not previously publicly known.”
Following the ruling, the entire case against Top Dawg remains pending. The defendants might now ask the judge to dismiss the original allegations of sexual harassment and assault; if such a motion were denied, the case would move forward into discovery and toward an eventual trial.
