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 choose 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 response to courtroom paperwork obtained by Folks journal on Friday.
In her lawsuit filed in February in opposition to Cohen, Bravo, Shed Media and different subsidiaries, McSweeney alleged that Bravoland was a “rotted office tradition that uniquely relied on pressuring its staff to devour 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 in opposition to her when she wished to remain sober.”
Cohen’s new courtroom paperwork said that McSweeney’s allegations are “threadbare” and ought to be “dismissed as a matter of legislation.” It additionally stated that her discrimination claims “impermissibly search to abridge Defendants’ First Modification rights to tailor and alter the messages they want to convey of their inventive works, together with by means of solid choice and different inventive choices.”
The defendants additionally said that they’ve by no means meant to make use of the Actual Housewives franchise to “characteristic inebriated solid members,” nevertheless, choices inside casting and directing could be inside their First Modification rights.
“‘No matter messages’ Defendants ‘talk or meant to speak’ with their reveals is protected by the First Modification,” the file to dismiss continued. “Judicial intervention into casting choices 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 by means of 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 lawyer responded to Cohen’s newest courtroom submitting in an announcement to Folks.
“We don’t agree that the movement has advantage — it largely argues for dismissal on technical grounds basically saying that Defendants had been allowed to discriminate in opposition to Ms. McSweeney — not that they didn’t do it,” Sarah Matz informed the outlet on the truth star’s behalf. “To agree with the Defendants could be to basically say that the inventive industries aren’t topic to anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation legal guidelines and that networks might 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 power anybody to do something,” he stated 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 little thing 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-after-day on that.”