Andy Cohen has filed to dismiss Actual Housewives star Leah McSweeney‘s lawsuit alleging office discrimination and alcohol- and drug-related favoritism.
About three months after McSweeney sued Cohen, the Bravo producer requested a decide to dismiss her earlier claims that she had skilled a “hostile work surroundings” throughout her time with the TV franchise, together with intercourse/gender and incapacity discrimination, in line with courtroom paperwork obtained by Individuals journal on Friday.
In her lawsuit filed in February towards Cohen, Bravo, Shed Media and different subsidiaries, McSweeney alleged that Bravoland was a “rotted office tradition that uniquely relied on pressuring its workers to eat alcohol.” The swimsuit additionally claimed that producers “colluded together with her colleagues to stress Ms. McSweeney to drink,” figuring out she struggled with an “alcohol use dysfunction,” and “retaliated towards her when she wished to remain sober.”
Cohen’s new courtroom paperwork said that McSweeney’s allegations are “threadbare” and needs to be “dismissed as a matter of legislation.” It additionally mentioned that her discrimination claims “impermissibly search to abridge Defendants’ First Modification rights to tailor and regulate the messages they want to convey of their inventive works, together with via forged choice and different inventive selections.”
The defendants additionally said that they’ve by no means supposed to make use of the Actual Housewives franchise to “characteristic inebriated forged members,” nonetheless, selections inside casting and directing can be inside their First Modification rights.
“‘No matter messages’ Defendants ‘talk or supposed to speak’ with their reveals is protected by the First Modification,” the file to dismiss continued. “Judicial intervention into casting selections for expressive works impermissibly regulate[s] [Defendants’] proper to change the content material of the story [they] inform — or select to not inform.”
The paperwork additionally addressed McSweeney’s claims that she confronted gender/sex-based harassment by Cohen via textual content messages. In response, Cohen’s submitting invoked Title VII and the New York Metropolis Human Rights Legislation, stating that her allegations had been “premature” and had surpassed the statute of limitations.
McSweeney’s legal professional responded to Cohen’s newest courtroom submitting in a press release to Individuals.
“We don’t agree that the movement has advantage — it principally argues for dismissal on technical grounds primarily saying that Defendants had been allowed to discriminate towards Ms. McSweeney — not that they didn’t do it,” Sarah Matz instructed the outlet on the fact star’s behalf. “To agree with the Defendants can be to primarily say that the inventive industries aren’t topic to anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation legal guidelines and that networks may interact in discrimination and retaliation with impunity, which isn’t the legislation.”
Earlier this month, in a canopy story for The Hollywood Reporter, Cohen spoke about McSweeney’s allegations in addition to others the Actual Housewives franchise has confronted lately.
“We don’t drive anybody to do something,” he mentioned on the time. “However nobody is secretly hiding liquor bottles on set. That’s ridiculous. We’ve been very supportive of individuals’s sobriety.”
He added later within the interview, “Clearly, it’s no enjoyable to be a goal. So, sure, it’s hurtful. However I’ve no regrets about the best way I’ve dealt with something. I feel every part that occurs in your life informs the subsequent factor that occurs in your life. That’s the best way I take a look at all this. I do know what the reality is and I understand how I’ve carried out myself, and I stroll tall day by day on that.”