Kanye West Seeks Dismissal of Donda Staffer's Lawsuit

Kanye West has filed a motion in Los Angeles asking a court to throw out a wrongful termination and harassment lawsuit brought by Murphy Aficionado, a staffer at his now-defunct Christian school, Donda Academy. A hearing on the motion is set for December 17, and a trial is scheduled for January.

The artist now known as Ye argues in his motion for summary judgment that Aficionado never worked for Yeezy at all. Instead, Ye claims, Aficionado taught only a temporary, part-time engineering class at Donda Academy that ended when the school shut down. Ye says Aficionado was paid $52 an hour for the teaching job and that the school's principal never heard him complain about his working conditions.

"There was never any employment relationship between Yeezy and plaintiff," the motion, obtained by Rolling Stone, states. "Plaintiff did not submit an employment application, receive an offer letter, there is no record of his onboarding, he has no personnel file, he was never provided an employee email account, he had no work schedule, or supervisory assignment."

Aficionado sued Ye in November 2024. He alleges that Ye hired him in late 2022 as a Yeezy project manager at $125 an hour, and that the job became a living "nightmare." Aficionado claims he routinely worked 70-hour weeks and sometimes slept at the office to meet Ye's demands, including work on a plan to move Donda Academy to a new "decrepit property" without the necessary permits. His lawsuit includes a text in which Ye allegedly wrote, "I need to pay you for your time."

Aficionado alleges Ye subjected him to a daily barrage of bigoted and antisemitic remarks, yelled at him, and made disparaging comments about his Filipino tattoos. According to the complaint, Ye told him on one occasion: "The Jews are out to get me. They froze my bank account. The Jews got Kim and my kids" — a reference to his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian.

The complaint also describes meetings at the Beverly Hills Waldorf Astoria that Aficionado said left him deeply disturbed. At one alleged meeting in November 2022, Aficionado encountered Ye's wife, Bianca Censori, topless in the suite and tried to leave, but Ye ordered him to stay, the lawsuit claims. Ye then referred to a lawyer who had just departed as "a Jewish spy," and later left Aficionado waiting while he had loud sex with Censori in a nearby bedroom, the complaint alleges. Aficionado said Ye returned wearing a T-shirt bearing a swastika and asked, "Don't you like my shirt?"

In the new filing, Ye's lawyers argue that Aficionado's claims should fail because, although his discovery responses identify Ye as his alleged harasser, they "describe no particular incident, identify no particular comment connecting the alleged conduct to a protected characteristic."

"Plaintiff's sensational allegations in the complaint read more like material for tabloid headlines than a case supported by evidence," the filing states. "When required under oath to identify the facts supporting his claims, plaintiff supplied rote conclusions and vague assertions. His responses identify no particular discriminatory comment or harassment incident, no dated sequence connecting a complaint to an adverse decision, and no compensation rate or formation date for the alleged contract."

Attempts to reach Aficionado's lawyers for comment were not immediately successful Thursday. Ye's lawyers did not respond to a request for further comment.

The filing comes as Ye faces pressure on other fronts. His two reportedly sold-out concerts in Russia were canceled amid a messy dispute.

Aficionado's lawsuit is not the first legal action by a purported Yeezy project manager alleging mistreatment. At a trial last March, Tony Saxon was awarded $140,000 for injuries he suffered while working at Ye's $57 million Malibu beach house. That verdict suggests that if Aficionado's case survives the December 17 hearing and reaches trial in January, a jury may once again weigh Ye's treatment of the people who worked for him.