The former Yeezy marketing specialist who claims Kanye West subjected her to “antisemitic vitriol,” sexual harassment, and retaliation was awarded $76,245 in attorneys’ fees Friday for her victory over West’s early attempt to dismiss her lawsuit on free speech grounds.
A California judge awarded the fees at a morning hearing in downtown Los Angeles. The Jane Doe plaintiff originally asked for $99,720 in legal fees and costs, but her lawyer said the reduced amount was acceptable too.
West’s new lawyer on the case, Andrew Cherkasky, argued unsuccessfully that the court should wait to order the fee payment because West is appealing the underlying ruling that trashed his First Amendment challenge to Jane Doe’s lawsuit as “frivolous.” The judge said the appellate court might take a year or more to rule on the underlying case, and he didn’t want to delay anything. He said West could simply appeal the fee award as well.
“We certainly do think there are very interesting First Amendment issues that could lead to additional appeals,” Cherkasky said at the end of the hearing. “At this point, we intend to aggressively move along with litigation,” if the appellate court upholds the lawsuit, he said. (The lawsuit is currently on hold pending the outcome of West’s appeal. If West is denied again, the next step will be to set a trial date, the judge said Friday.)
In his written ruling adopted from the bench, Los Angeles County Judge Nicholas F. Daum awarded the $76,245 in attorneys’ fees after reviewing the decision by his predecessor judge that found West’s motion to strike was a baseless stalling tactic. Daum said he agreed that the motion was “indeed frivolous.”
The Jane Doe plaintiff brought her lawsuit in February. In the 34-page complaint, obtained by Rolling Stone, she said her turbulent tenure working for West’s company Yeezy in late 2023 and 2024 was a minefield of anti-semitic verbal abuse, discrimination, and “constant degradation of women.”
The woman claims that West, also known as Ye, sent her harassing texts reading, “Welcome to the first day of working for Hitler,” and “Hail Hitler,” before her abrupt termination when she reported West’s behavior to her manager. She further claims West once texted her a photo of a nude woman and ordered her to work on his Yeezy Porn venture against her wishes.
In April, West filed his motion to strike the complaint, claiming the ex-staffer was trying to “suppress” his constitutionally protected right to artistic expression. “Ye is not merely a creator; he is art,” the filing said. “Ye’s public and private personas form a continuous, provocative performance that challenges societal taboos surrounding race, religion, gender, power, politics, and censorship.”
Judge Daum’s predecessor, Judge Theresa M. Traber, denied West’s motion in a scathing June 30 ruling. She said the motion was “rife with defects, specious arguments, and misstatements of law.” She said the declarations West submitted from alleged witnesses, including one from West’s self-described chief of staff, Milo Yiannopoulos, were “totally lacking in personal knowledge or proper foundation upon which to base their asserted opinions.” She described the motion as “frivolous and/or solely intended to cause unnecessary delay.”
For their part, West’s lawyers argue that Jane Doe “voluntarily entered a provocative creative environment” and later tried to reframe West’s creative expression as “unlawful.”
West, 48, has been sued more than a dozen times since his initial, highly public antisemitic tirade nearly three years ago. In October 2022, West tweeted his now-infamous plan to “go death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE.” Weeks later, Rolling Stone published an investigation that found West presided over a “toxic” work environment at his Yeezy label, telling one staffer that “skinheads and Nazis were his greatest inspiration.” West later apologized in an Instagram post written in Hebrew, but he again promoted antisemitic ideology, sporting a T-shirt for the Norwegian metal musician Burzum, who has been fined for antisemitism. West also promoted Vultures 1 with artwork that evoked Burzum’s cover art.
“Ye waged a relentless and deliberate campaign of antisemitism and misogyny against my client,” Jane Doe’s attorney, Carney Shegerian of Shegerian & Associates, said in a statement in February. “His appalling treatment of women and fixation on Nazism, evident in abusive texts where he repeatedly calls himself Hitler, expose his motives. We need to stop excusing Ye’s behavior. As a father, husband, and employer, he must be held accountable. Ye dared my client to sue, and we will see him in court.”
