A lawyer for the rapper formerly known as Kanye West asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit from former teachers at his private Southern California Christian school, saying in court documents filed this week that depictions of Donda Academy as a “dystopian institution designed to satisfy Ye’s idiosyncrasies” were false.
“None of it is true and the allegations do a disservice to the Donda Academy’s current staff and students and their parents who will attest to their positive experience,” attorney Gregory Suhr said in a filing Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
The allegations were included in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed in April by two former teachers, Cecilia Hailey and Chekarey Byers, who claimed they were fired in retaliation for reporting code violations.
A third former teacher was added to the lawsuit this month.
The former teachers described a troubling picture of the Southern California school, claiming there were no janitorial services or medical staff and that forks, jewelry and clothes that weren’t black or designed by Ye were banned.
The teachers, who are Black, claimed that they faced racial discrimination and that administrators failed to respond to severe bullying. They also alleged that students were fed only sushi and that their paychecks were often short by as much as $2,700.
This week’s filing says that Donda Academy will defend itself against the allegations from Byers and Hailey and that Ye is subject only to the inaccurate wage claims — claims the filing dismisses because he “has nothing to do with Donda’s policies, practices, and procedures relating to employee pay and wage statements.”
“Surely, Plaintiffs know that,” the filing says. “But — as unfortunately is commonly the case for Ye, a famous artist and businessperson — in the present action, Plaintiffs have haphazardly tossed a meritless and barebones guilt-by-association theory into their complaint to garner press attention and the resulting settlement pressure that comes with it.”
The filing describes the claims as “improper” and asks the judge to dismiss them.
Suhr did not address allegations from the third teacher, saying in this week's filing that they are not connected to Ye.
Lawyers for Donda Academy have not responded to requests for comment. In a court filing last month, they described the suit as “fatally uncertain, ambiguous, and unintelligible.”
A lawyer for the former teachers, Ron Zambrano, described the request for dismissal as “clearly without basis.”
“His response that he had nothing to do with Donda’s policies and procedures related to employee pay is just ridiculous given he serves as the school’s chief executive officer, secretary and chief financial officer,” Zambrano said.
“Mr. West is clearly just trying to get out of this situation, one for which he only has himself to blame. We’re confident that the truth will prevail,” he added.
Zambrano also represents a third plaintiff in the suit, a third former teacher who claimed this month that she was fired after parents complained that her class had no books.
