Megan Thee Stallion just got legal backup from one of the biggest names in modern courtroom history: the same powerhouse attorney who helped take down Donald Trump.
Roberta Kaplan, the civil rights lawyer who represented writer E. Jean Carroll in her defamation and sexual assault lawsuits against Trump, has stepped into Megan’s corner with a blistering amicus curiae brief filed in federal court.
She’s backing Megan’s fight against Texas blogger Milagro “Milagro Gramz” Cooper, who was found liable for spreading a fake, sexually explicit AI-generated video of the rapper.
Kaplan doesn’t mince words. She argues that Cooper’s conduct, reposting and promoting a pornographic deepfake of Megan to her thousands of followers, is not “free speech.”
“This case demonstrates how technological advances can amplify familiar forms of online harm, including harm based on sexually explicit images. Deep-fake sexual imagery does not contribute to public debate; it reproduces patterns of intimidation and degradation that the law has long deemed unprotected,” Roberta Kaplan explained.
Kaplan says it’s harassment, plain and simple. And under Florida law, that kind of abuse has no First Amendment protection. The filing marks another chapter in Kaplan’s long campaign to hold powerful and reckless people accountable for weaponizing lies.
She’s the same attorney who secured two major defamation verdicts against Trump on behalf of Carroll, totaling more than $83 million.
In that case, jurors decided Trump acted with malice when he smeared Carroll after she accused him of sexual assault. A federal appeals court upheld the verdict last year, cementing it as one of the most important defamation rulings in decades.
Now, Kaplan is making it clear that digital defamation, especially when fueled by AI, deserves the same treatment.
In her brief, she compares deepfakes to other banned forms of abuse like revenge p### or child sexual exploitation materials, saying all of them use technology as a “mechanism of harm.”
The connection between the Carroll and Megan cases runs deeper than just Kaplan’s signature. Both center on women forced to fight in public: one against a former president, the other against a YouTube gossip blogger.
Both women endured online harassment and disbelief before juries ultimately sided with them and the victories hinge on the same legal foundation: defamation law’s recognition that free speech doesn’t protect deliberate, damaging falsehoods.
Megan Thee Stallion filed her defamation suit in 2024 after Cooper repeatedly targeted her online, pushing false narratives and amplifying the deepfake clip that claimed to show Megan in a sexual act.
Megan’s team said the posts caused emotional distress, career fallout, and relentless public humiliation. In December, a Miami jury agreed, finding Cooper liable for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
At trial, Megan Thee Stallion testified that the fake video wrecked her mental health.
Her manager described her breaking down and crying after seeing the clip, while her psychologist diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder from the incident.
“I genuinely did not care if I lived or died,” she told jurors.
The jury awarded Megan roughly $75,000, which was later reduced slightly after post-trial motions, but Cooper still called it “a win,” bragging that it wasn’t a “multimillion-dollar fine.”
That attitude, Kaplan argues, is exactly why an injunction is necessary: to stop repeat behavior that continues to inflict harm long after a verdict. Kaplan’s filing notes that courts have always drawn a line between speech that informs and speech that terrorizes.
Kaplan’s involvement suggests the Megan Thee Stallion case could set a benchmark for how deepfakes and online harassment are handled legally.
The judge in Miami is expected to rule soon on Megan’s request for an injunction to permanently block Cooper from promoting similar content. If granted, it would set one of the first major precedents tying deepfake abuse to cyberstalking law.
“Maybe I am going through all of this because there’s another woman out there that may be a victim and she sees me going through it, and she sees me come out on the other side and it may give her the courage or the strength to speak up and say, this happened to me and I’m not going to be scared of you. I am not going to be intimidated by you,” Megan said during the trial.
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