Kanye West got slapped with a fat $76,245 tab Friday in a Los Angeles courtroom after a judge basically laughed off his attempt to nix a harassment lawsuit from a former Yeezy employee, calling it “frivolous.”
The case comes from a woman who used to work in marketing at Yeezy, and she says her time there was filled with “antisemitic vitriol,” creepy behavior and flat-out retaliation.
She originally wanted nearly $100,000 in legal fees but settled for a smaller amount. Her lawyer said the amount was acceptable to them.
According to Rolling Stone, Judge Nicholas F. Daum handed down the order during a hearing in Downtown Los Angeles.
The lawsuit kicked off after the woman sued Ye back in February, claiming he bombarded her with disturbing messages and sexually inappropriate content while she was on the job.
One of the texts allegedly said, “Welcome to the first day of working for Hitler,” and another one read, “Hail Hitler. [sic]”
She also says he sent her a nude pic and tried to force her into helping with his weird “Yeezy P###” project. She says she got fired after reporting the behavior.
The woman’s lawsuit paints a bleak picture of life at Yeezy, calling it a “minefield of anti-semitic verbal abuse, discrimination, and constant degradation of women.”
She says Ye’s obsession with Nazis and misogynistic behavior was nonstop. Ye’s camp attempted to shut down the entire lawsuit in April, claiming the lawsuit was an attack on his “art.”
His legal filing claimed, “Ye is not merely a creator; he is art. Ye’s public and private personas form a continuous, provocative performance that challenges societal taboos surrounding race, religion, gender, power, politics, and censorship.”
Judge Theresa M. Traber wasn’t buying it. She torched the motion in June, calling it “rife with defects, specious arguments, and misstatements of law.”
She even said one of his witnesses, controversial figure Milo Yiannopoulos, had declarations that were “totally lacking in personal knowledge or proper foundation.”
She said the whole thing looked like it was “frivolous and/or solely intended to cause unnecessary delay.”
Ye’s new attorney, Andrew Cherkasky, is still pushing back. “We certainly do think there are very interesting First Amendment issues that could lead to additional appeals,” he said. “At this point, we intend to aggressively move along with litigation.”
Since his antisemitic remarks in 2022—including that wild tweet about going “death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE”—he’s been sued left and right by former employees and business partners.
Right now, the lawsuit’s on pause while Ye appeals.
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