Dear listeners,
The latest, most brutal entry in the rap battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake comes in the form of a motion to dismiss. Drake, you will remember, sued Lamar’s record label (which is also Drake’s record label) for defamation, alleging that Lamar’s hit single “Not Like Us” defames him by calling him a pedophile. But as UMG’s attorney Rollin Ransom1 points out, rap battles are well known to feature hyperbolic accusations and insults that are not necessarily factual, which means they are unlikely to be defamatory. Plus, Drake explicitly dared Lamar to call him a pedophile — or, more specifically, Drake released a track in which he used an AI-generated Tupac Shakur voice to urge Lamar to “talk about [Drake] likin’ young girls.”
It’s all very embarrassing, but as Ken notes, while UMG has a strong argument that it did not assist in defaming its own client, their argument is one a judge might not agree to consider in its entirety at this stage in the case. A motion to dismiss is ordinarily supposed to be evaluated just on the basis of the facts alleged in the plaintiff’s complaint, but UMG asks for “judicial notice” of various facts about the rap battle that were reported in the media. And that’s a conversation that could have to wait until later.
Meanwhile, President Trump is trying to give Paul Weiss the Perkins Coie treatment, declaring the firm and its attorneys to be a threat to security, telling federal contractors to fire them, and ordering them barred from government buildings. Trump’s order against Perkins Coie is tied up with a temporary restraining order, and the Paul Weiss order is likely headed the same way — though both the courts and the legal industry will have to reach more durable conclusions about how they will respond to Trump’s assault on lawyers’ prerogative to choose their clients.
Several of Trump’s major executive actions are facing new roadblocks in the courts, with judges ordering temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions. One of those cases — the one before Judge Ana Reyes about Trump’s efforts to ban transgender service members from the military — may set up the Supreme Court to consider how far the discrimination protections from the Bostock decision extend. In another case, Judge Theodore Chuang wants to force the administration to reopen USAID, at least for now, and Ken and I discuss what compliance with that order would even look like. Meanwhile, Judge William Alsup has angrily rejected the administration’s pretext that en masse firings of probationary employees were conducted due to individualized findings of poor performance.
Most dramatically, Judge James Boasberg is trying to determine whether the Trump Administration has willfully defied his orders related to the removal of alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The Justice Department says Boasberg is overstepping the bounds of the courts’ authority, the president says Boasberg should be impeached, some House Republicans are introducing resolutions to move that impeachment, and Chief Justice John Roberts made a rare public statement saying they shouldn’t say things like that.
Plus, Nancy Mace faces a defamation lawsuit where the speech or debate clause is likely to provide her an important shield, and Ed Martin continues to Ed Martin.
Whew! That’s a lot for one week. We hope you enjoy the conversation.
Best,
Josh
Click here for a transcript of this episode.
Great name!
Share this post