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Mark SavageMusic Correspondent
ReutersPop star Lizzo is celebrating a legal victory after a judge dismissed allegations of fat-shaming from a 2023 lawsuit filed by three of her former dancers.
The singer, whose hits include body positive anthems such as Good As Hell and Juice, marked the development with a video statement posted to her Instagram and TikTok feeds.
“There was no evidence that I fired them because they gained weight,” Lizzo said. “They were fired for taking a private recording of me without my consent and sending it off to ex-employees.”
While those specific allegations have been dropped, the case against Lizzo and her production company will continue, over claims that three dancers were subject to sexual harassment.
Lizzo’s team has called the lawsuit a “fabricated sob story,” but a Los Angeles judge ruled that the case could move forward last year.
Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams and Noelle Rodriguez say they were pressured into attending sex shows and interacting with nude performers between 2021 and 2023.
The claims against Lizzo – whose real name is Melissa Viviane Jefferson – include that she “pressured Ms Davis to touch the breasts” of a dancer in a nightclub in Amsterdam.
Although she initially resisted, Ms Davis eventually acquiesced, “fearing it may harm her future on the team” if she didn’t do so, according to court documents.
Other incidents cited in the case include the claim that dancers were asked to eat fruit from the naked bodies of sex club workers.
Over the summer, Lizzo’s lawyers appealed the decision to let those claims got to trial, arguing that group outings were part of the singer’s creative process and thus should be shielded by First Amendment free speech protections.
In response, a lawyer for the dancers rejected that claim, saying it was not enough to say the sex shows had inspired Lizzo’s own performances.
“Under that standard,” wrote Ari Stiller, “Johnny Cash could shoot ‘a man in Reno just to watch him die’ and claim protection if he hoped it would inspire his performance”.
Stiller urged the court to allow the claims to proceed to trial.
Lizzo’s attorney, Melissa Glass, claimed that Stiller’s brief “regurgitates the false accusations from their [original] complaint”.
“As was true two years ago, the dancers cannot find a single person to corroborate their meritless claims,” Glass said in a statement to Billboard magazine.
“In contrast, 18 witnesses who worked with Lizzo on the Special tour submitted sworn statements refuting the claims made by Davis, Williams and Rodriguez. We look forward to the Court of Appeals ruling on this matter.”
Lizzo has adamantly denied the allegations against her.
“I am very open with my sexuality and expressing myself but I cannot accept or allow people to use that openness to make me out to be something I am not,” she said when the claims first emerged in 2023.
In her latest statement, the singer added that the fat-shaming allegations had “haunted” her for the last two years, adding that it had been “devastating to suffer through this in silence”.
She also stressed that she has “only encouraged and supported people with bigger bodies and shared my platform with them.”
Thanking her lawyers, Lizzo said she intended to keep fighting the lawsuit.
“I am not settling,” she said. “I will be fighting every single claim until the truth is out.
