LOS ANGELES (CNS) - Lizzo's dance captain has responded to a lawsuit in which she is named as a co-defendant by three former backup dancers who allege the Grammy-winning singer weight-shamed them, forced them to take part in sex shows and endure sexually denigrating behavior, saying the plaintiffs' case should be dismissed on First Amendment grounds.
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In their Santa Monica Superior Court lawsuit, Crystal Williams, Arianna Davis and Noelle Rodriguez make allegations of a hostile work environment, failure to prevent or remedy a hostile work environment, religious harassment, failure to prevent religious harassment, disability discrimination, assault and false imprisonment.
According to the lawsuit, Davis and Williams met Lizzo in March 2021 while preparing to be contestants on the singer's reality show, "Lizzo's Watch Out for the Big Grrrls." They also then met Shirlene Quigley, a judge on the show and the dance team captain. The lawsuit alleges that Quigley routinely preached her Christian religious beliefs to the defendants, and when she found out that Davis was a virgin, Quigley would routinely bring it up in conversations and even discussed it in interviews that were later posted to social media, "broadcasting an intensely personal detail ... to the world."
Quigley's name is mentioned nearly 90 times in the lawsuit.
In court papers filed Thursday with Judge H. Jay Ford III, Quigley's lawyer, Theresa J. Macellaro, argues her client is not liable to the three dancers and that they are not entitled to punitive damages. The plaintiffs' allegations are barred because they involve Quigley's exercise of her rights of freedom of speech and/or freedom of religion protected in the California and U.S. constitutions, Macellaro further maintains in their court papers.
In addition, the dancers have "ratified, acquiesced, condoned and/or approved of the acts or omissions of (Quigley) ... about which plaintiffs now complain," according to Macellaro, who concludes by saying the dancers should "take nothing by way of the complaint" and that their complaint by be "dismissed in its entirety."
Rodriguez was hired in May 2021 to appear in Lizzo's "Rumors" music video. Once she and the other two plaintiffs were chosen as backup dancers for Lizzo, Quigley continued to preach Christianity while deriding premarital sex and routinely discussing her sex life with her husband, according to the suit.
During a February 2023 tour stop in Amsterdam, Lizzo invited the dancers to the Red Light District and took them to a bar that featured nude performers, according to the suit. The complaint alleges that Lizzo invited dancers to touch and interact with the nude performers in a sexually charged atmosphere, then pressured Davis to touch the breasts of one of the nude female performers, to which Davis eventually acquiesced, fearing it might affect her job if she didn't.
The suit also contends Lizzo took dancers and crew to a nude cabaret bar in Paris the following week.
The plaintiffs also allege that management of Big Grrrl Big Touring treated Black members of the team differently, accusing them of "being lazy, unprofessional and having bad attitudes."
"Only the dance cast -- comprised of full-figured women of color -- were ever spoken to in this manner, giving Plaintiffs the impression that these comments were charged with racial and fat-phobic animus," the suit contends.
According to the suit filed Aug. 1, Lizzo and another choreographer confronted Davis in an April 2023 conversation that included questions that were "thinly veiled concerns about Ms. Davis' weight gain, which Lizzo had previously called attention to after noticing it at the South by Southwest music festival."
The suit alleges that Williams was fired under the guise of budget cuts, while Davis was fired in May 2023 for recording a meeting the dancers had with Lizzo about their performances. Rodriguez quit after seeing Williams and Davis get fired, prompting what the lawsuit describes as an angry response from Lizzo.
Lizzo previously called the dancers' accusations "unbelievable" and "outrageous."
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