Smokey Robinson files $500m case against rape accusers
Motown legend Smokey Robinson has filed a $500m (£370m) defamation lawsuit against four former housekeepers who have accused the singer of sexual assault.
The legal case filed by the star and his wife Frances on Wednesday in California accused the women of fabricating the sexual assault allegations as part of an "extortionate" lawsuit.
The Robinsons say the alleged victims, who filed their case anonomously, went on family holidays with the couple and celebrated holidays together.
The singer, who is now also under criminal investigation in Los Angeles over accusations of sexual assault, has denied all the allegations, and his lawyer said those behind the accusations were after his money.
Mr Robinson's lawyers also filed a motion to dismiss the women's lawsuit, arguing they should not have been granted anonymity.
"The Robinsons did not abuse, harm, or take advantage of plaintiffs; they treated plaintiffs with the utmost kindness and generosity," the lawsuit states.
The women filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on 6 May under the pseudonyms Jane Doe 1, 2, 3 and 4.
In the 27-page legal action, they alleged several incidents that they said dated back to 2006, and accused Mr Robinson of pressuring them into sex.
All four women, who are of Hispanic descent, said they had not come forward until now because they feared losing their livelihoods, familial reprisal or embarrassment. Some were concerned the allegations could affect their immigration status.
They are seeking at least $50m (£38m) in damages and a jury trial.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department then opened its investigation, which the 85-year-old singer said at the time he welcomed "because exposure to the truth is a powerful thing".
Mr Robinson was Motown's first hitmaker, writing number one records like Mary Wells' My Guy and The Temptations' My Girl.
He was both a talent scout for the record label and one of its most prominent recording artists in his own right, known for songs like Tracks of My Tears, Shop Around and Tears of a Clown.
He has spots in both the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and claims to have credits on more than 4,000 songs.
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San Francisco Chronicle
2 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Raphael Saadiq's bass stolen before Oakland show, but the music played on
While recreating his 1984 audition for Sheila E's band, Raphael Saadiq slipped in a quick spontaneous story about something that happened to him earlier in the day. It was a slice of dark humor about life in the Town — a place that has given the musician so much but still tests his resilience. 'The bass I brought here got stolen today — welcome home!' he yelled sarcastically, to roars of supportive laughter. Oakland's hometown R&B hero was back with his 'No Bandwidth: One Man, One Night, Three Decades of Hits' solo show to the Fox Theater in Oakland on Saturday, June 7, for the first of two unique performances. It was Saadiq's first time in front of a Bay Area audience since his 2025 NBA All-Star Game performance in February, and the evening had a decidedly different vibe. For two-and-a-half hours, Saadiq shared stories in spoken and musical form about his Oakland upbringing, key moments in music discovery, his big breaks and breakups, and a family life blessed with love but touched by tragedy. The Fox Theater was packed with day-ones who had watched him grow from a skinny kid chowing burgers at Kwik Way to Tony! Toni! Toné! frontman to acclaimed solo artist to Grammy-winning producer. The format was similar to Netflix's 'Springsteen on Broadway ' or 'Beastie Boys Story ' on Apple TV+. As the title of the production implies, there was no band, just Saadiq seated on a stool with two guitars, a bass, a turntable and a piano. He displayed his piano proficiency, playing a majority of the evening's songs on an instrument he stopped learning as a child but picked up again during the pandemic. 'She went next door to Safeway and bought some groceries,' he said, proudly. 'Then I was born in 1966 at Highland Hospital and now I'm here.' Good times at the talent show Against his mother's wishes, Saadiq snuck his bass and amp to school and won his Elmhurst Middle School talent contest by playing a medley of funky jams — ' Peanut Butter,' 'Another One Bites the Dust' and 'Good Times.' On Saturday, he reenacted his motions and emotions as the songs played. He said he convinced the principal to escort him home with the trophy to avoid a whupping from his mom. It worked. 'Lucifer Pearl' Reminiscing about his short-lived supergroup Lucy Pearl, Saadiq referred to his post-Tonies R&B/hip-hop collaboration with A Tribe Called Quest DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammed and singer Dawn Robinson of Oakland's En Vogue as 'Lucifer Pearl.' Metaphorical tea spilled as he recalled the day Robinson quit the tour and left the band. 'When she left, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders,' he said. 'I remembered why I started making music. I had forgotten because I was so stressed. But, beauty comes from ashes.' Then Lucy Pearl's 'You' — a song that doesn't feature Robinson — played out the speakers and the crowd got up and rocked along. Making the cut with help from Rick Rubin Super producer Rick Rubin played a pivotal role in keeping Saadiq on Columbia Record's roster. Tasked with getting rid of low-performing acts, Rubin met with the artist to listen to Saadiq's unconventional 2008 Motown-influenced solo album 'The Way I See It.' Rubin, in his zen-like way, questioned whether the drums were programmed and if the guitar was real. They were — Saadiq confirmed he played all the instruments live. Impressed, Saadiq didn't get dropped. 'They didn't promote it,' Saadiq countered, 'but it was a good lesson about going with your gut.' 'Tattooed in my heart' The show's emotional highpoint was reserved for his five siblings who are no longer with him, including his brother and Tony! Toni! Toné! cofounder D'Wayne Wiggins, who at 64 died of bladder cancer in March 2025. Saadiq noted he's run out of tattoo space on his arms to commemorate any more dead siblings. '(D'Wayne) will always be tattooed in my heart,' he said. As he recounted the moment when D'wayne knew their time together was coming to an end, Saadiq paused to compose himself, clasping his hands in prayer. He lit a stick of incense and recalled the time he got to collaborate with Isley Brothers guitarist Ernie Isley, who D'Wayne worshipped. As the track ' Ernie's Jam ' played, the incense smouldered in the tuning pegs of his brother's guitar. Saadiq solemnly walked to the back of the stage and faced the screen, as a photo montage of his brother played.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
WA farmworkers fear reporting sexual harassment to federal agency under Trump
Marlen, right, a peer trainer for the BASTA Coalition of Washington, and Isabel Reyes-Paz, the coalition's director, lead trainings primarily for Mexican immigrant women about sexual harassment of farmworkers in the Yakima Valley, an agricultural region in Central Washington. (Photo by Jake Parrish/InvestigateWest) Marlen, a 35-year-old mother from Mexico, knows what farmworkers like her are supposed to do if they're sexually harassed on the job: Tell the harasser to stop, document it, then report it to company leadership. If none of that works, get legal help. This could mean filing a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the government agency responsible for enforcing federal employment discrimination laws. Marlen leads training sessions in Spanish for other Latina farmworkers in central Washington about sexual harassment, following guidance drawn from the EEOC. In agricultural areas like Yakima County, where more than half the population is Hispanic or Latino, many victims are immigrants who speak little English, while many perpetrators are supervisors with the power to punish those who report them or refuse their demands. So at the end of 2023, when Marlen's supervisor at a large fruit farm in the Yakima Valley started leering at her, making crude comments about women's bodies like 'nice camel legs,' and filming her as she stood on a ladder cutting tree branches, she reported it to a manager, she said. Then she was assigned to more physically demanding jobs, such as digging holes in rocky ground and moving heavy wooden posts — work that typically only men would do and that isolated her from co-workers, according to her documentation of the incidents. 'It makes me feel like it was wrong of me to report him,' Marlen said in Spanish. She asked to go by her first name for this article because she still works for the company. 'Like I made a mistake, when the one who made the mistake was him.' But if things get worse for Marlen, she probably wouldn't report it to the EEOC, the commission that for nearly three decades has defended immigrant farmworkers like her against workplace sexual harassment and abuse — no matter their immigration status. 'What are they going to do with the information we give them? Are they going to help us or make things worse for us?' she said. 'I feel like — not just in cases of harassment, but with anything happening with someone right now — people won't report it because of fear.' As the Trump administration's immigration crackdown reaches into agricultural communities across the country and the EEOC shifts priorities to align with those of the president, it's unclear to these farmworkers and their attorneys whether the agency will continue to protect them. In one of several actions contributing to a growing fear that the EEOC is being politicized by President Trump, the commission's Trump-appointed acting chair, Andrea Lucas, announced in February that the commission will help deter illegal migration by enforcing employment antidiscrimination laws against employers that 'illegally prefer non-American workers.' And in the name of protecting women from workplace sexual harassment, Lucas also vowed to roll back the Biden administration's 'gender identity agenda.' The commission then moved to dismiss several lawsuits against companies alleging discrimination against transgender and nonbinary workers. The commission declined to comment when InvestigateWest asked if workers can continue filing complaints without fear that their immigration status will be used against them. 'The EEOC was playing a very critical role in being able to protect survivors of workplace sexual harassment, including egregious rape. The sense that we're getting is that they're no longer going to be that kind of an agency,' said Blanca Rodriguez, deputy director of advocacy for Columbia Legal Services, a nonprofit legal aid program in Washington. 'They're going to be an agency that immigrant communities are going to fear. And that is not only going to do harm during the Trump administration, but for years to come.' While it's unclear whether the federal commission would in fact share people's immigration information with other agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the uncertainty alone is deterring farmworkers from reporting sexual harassment and abuse to government and legal organizations, according to attorneys and advocates in the region. The Northwest Justice Project, a nonprofit law firm that represents low-income people in Washington, recorded 16 cases involving sexual harassment of a farmworker in 2024. It had 21 such cases in 2023 and 17 in 2022. So far in 2025, as Trump returned to the White House, the firm has recorded only two cases (although the Northwest Justice Project cautioned this could be an undercount because the data is not yet fully entered in its system). These cases may also take a back seat as the Washington Attorney General's Office, an alternative to the federal government for combating sexual violence against farmworkers, spends more of its limited resources pushing back against the Trump administration's actions, leaving these workers with few — if any — options for recourse. The state Attorney General's Office has sued the Trump administration more than a dozen times over issues like birthright citizenship, gender-affirming care for youth, education funding and health funding. 'It's a terrible outcome if we have to spend all of our energy responding to the federal government, and thus leaving workers in Washington without any protection because the EEOC may not do its job,' said the office's Civil Rights Division Chief Colleen Melody. 'Resources are a major concern, and burnout will be a huge concern if we don't get additional resources to help do this work.' In 1991, a federal court case in California shaped the future of undocumented workers' rights. In a victory for immigrant rights, the judge ruled that undocumented workers are covered under Title VII, a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits discrimination against employees based on national origin, race, sex and more. The ruling opened the door for millions of immigrant workers to file discrimination charges with the EEOC. For William Tamayo, a now-retired attorney who represented the plaintiff, a woman from Mexico, it was just the beginning of a trailblazing career protecting immigrants from sex-based discrimination. When Tamayo joined the EEOC as a regional attorney in 1995, the agency had never before sued an agricultural company over sexual harassment of a farmworker. 'Largely, the presence of the federal government was the immigration service. So I had to figure out, 'How would they trust me and trust the EEOC?'' Tamayo said. 'It was really hard work.' His first major breakthrough came in 1999. One of the nation's largest lettuce growers, Tanimura & Antle, settled a case with the EEOC involving a single mother from El Salvador who said that a hiring official forced her to have sex to get a seasonal job picking crops. Since then, the EEOC has brought more than 50 agricultural companies to court over such allegations, primarily under Tamayo's leadership, leading to improved sexual harassment trainings and over $35 million awarded to farmworkers throughout the country. This doesn't include the many cases resolved through mediation and settlements before a lawsuit was filed. Allegations range from pervasive verbal harassment to violent assaults: A woman whose supervisor held pruning shears to her throat and repeatedly raped her at a tree farm in Oregon's Willamette Valley. Managers and employees at a California raisin company who, for over a decade, groped and demanded sex from female workers. A pregnant woman whose manager, after she rejected his almost daily sexual advances at a fruit packing warehouse in central Washington, fired her husband and assigned her to lift 40-pound boxes without help. In most cases, the women who reported sexual violence also reported consequences for doing so — they lost their jobs, were demoted, isolated from co-workers. Sexual harassment and retaliation are illegal under federal and state law. Yet studies estimate that 65% to 80% of farmworker women in the U.S. agricultural industry experience workplace sexual harassment. The nationwide issue, spotlighted by a 2013 PBS Frontline documentary, 'Rape in the Fields,' has been especially scrutinized in California, Washington and Oregon, which have among the highest employment levels in agricultural industries of all states, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The commission's commitment to protecting people's immigration information is key to farmworkers' ability to speak out about sexual abuse and harassment, according to Tamayo, who retired from the EEOC in 2021 after 20 years as a regional attorney and another six years as district director overseeing investigations across the western United States. 'Certainly, if the EEOC started asking about immigration status, that would be the end of these farmworker cases,' he said. 'It has nothing to do with whether she was raped or not.' Attorneys like Rodriguez and Michael Meuter, vice president of legal affairs and general counsel at California Rural Legal Assistance, say their farmworker clients in Washington and California are now deciding not to file sexual harassment charges with the commission. The level of fear among immigrant clients is unmatched even compared to the first Trump administration when anti-immigrant rhetoric escalated, they say. 'I think during the last administration, it was harder to get cases approved for litigation. But I think partly because Bill Tamayo — people who care about immigrant workers like him — were still at the EEOC, I still saw the EEOC conduct investigations,' Rodriguez said. 'Things are completely different now. There is no trust at all in the EEOC.' Despite the successes that the EEOC had under Tamayo's leadership, filing complaints with the commission has never been a silver bullet. Strict filing deadlines, language barriers and fear of reporting have long stood in the way of farmworkers facing sexual harassment on the job, attorneys say. Of 8,191 sexual harassment charges resolved through the EEOC in fiscal year 2024, 26.7% were closed for administrative reasons like untimeliness, according to the commission's enforcement and litigation statistics. Nearly half (47%) were dismissed because the commission didn't find reasonable cause to support the discrimination claim. In Oregon, the EEOC hasn't litigated a farmworker sexual harassment case since 2013, court records show. Reporting to the commission, however, can still prove beneficial because it preserves workers' Title VII rights — they receive a 'Right to Sue' notice when the agency closes its investigation, enabling them to file their own Title VII lawsuits. In states with stronger worker protections like Washington, California and Oregon, farmworkers can instead take complaints to their state governments, an option that might feel safer for immigrants who distrust the current federal administration. But those routes have limitations as well. In Washington, for example, the Washington State Human Rights Commission enforces state law prohibiting sexual harassment. While the state commission itself doesn't bring cases to court, it can negotiate agreements with companies and refer cases to the state Attorney General's Office. 'We want every farmworker — regardless of immigration status, job type, or background — to know that they have the right to live and work free from sexual harassment and discrimination,' said Washington State Human Rights Commission Executive Director Andreta Armstrong in an email statement to InvestigateWest. But workers have just a six-month window from the date of the harm to file a complaint with the state commission, and a backlog of cases means that complaints can take years to be investigated. Of 44 sexual harassment complaints against agricultural companies received by the Washington commission since 2015, just eight ended in resolutions through settlements or agreements with their employers, according to InvestigateWest's review of data provided by the agency. Nearly 70% of cases were closed for administrative reasons or after the commission found 'no reasonable cause.' Another avenue that has proven committed to combating sexual violence against farmworkers — the Washington Attorney General's Office — is also narrowing under the Trump administration. Since launching its civil rights unit in 2015, the office has sued five different agricultural companies on behalf of farmworkers who alleged sexual harassment or sexual abuse on the job. Although state law protects everyone from sexual harassment, regardless of immigration or citizenship status, many farmworkers still fear that coming forward may put them at risk for attention by immigration officials, said Melody, the office's civil rights division chief. This fear has been 'noticeably true' since the 2024 election, Melody added. 'Witnesses tell us that they have a story to tell, but they're afraid and unwilling to come forward and tell it,' she said. 'They may have family members who are impacted. They may have colleagues who are impacted, and they fear that coming forward may expose any of those people to retribution.' For immigrant farmworkers who are weighing the risks of speaking out, Melody recommends they ask questions like: Will my immigration status be necessary for this investigation? Will it be shared? With whom will it be shared? 'In the Washington State Attorney General's Office, the answer is, 'We almost always don't need to know, and we don't share it with anyone,'' she said. 'I'm not sure what the answer is at the EEOC right now.' On a Saturday morning in May, Marlen gathered with seven other women in a classroom in Sunnyside, a small city in the heart of the Yakima Valley. Over a table of tamales and coffee, they painted bandanas for the BASTA Coalition of Washington, which provides sexual harassment trainings for farmworkers in the state. They filled the white cloth with messages in Spanish and English like, 'Farmworker women's voices are key!' The women, who each found agricultural work in central Washington after leaving Mexico, spoke about how to weigh the importance of reporting sexual harassment against people's fear of losing their jobs or being deported for doing so. Marlen said the harassment she experienced in the apple orchards has improved recently, after she took some time off from work for a family matter. A few months ago, when she was being isolated from her co-workers in what she believes was retaliation for reporting her supervisor, she would've said she regretted reporting the harassment. But now, despite the risks, she stands by her decision. 'There comes a time when you get overwhelmed and say, 'Why did I report it? I should've just kept quiet,'' Marlen said. 'But if tomorrow it happens to my daughter, I feel like no — someone has to make the change.' That decision, however, may not be right for everyone. BASTA, which means 'enough' in Spanish, currently lists the EEOC as a resource for workers facing sexual harassment. The coalition's director, Isabel Reyes-Paz, said they might need to reconsider that recommendation, or at least provide a caveat: 'We don't know what's going to happen with the current administration. We can't guarantee that your legal status information is protected or not,' Reyes-Paz said. The coalition is also grappling with federal funding cuts, as grants that it had relied on to grow — like those administered by the Department of Labor to support women's employment — are being slashed. 'What are we going to do?' one woman said in Spanish at the meeting in May. 'How are we going to encourage them to seek help if we're also thinking the same thing? We're all afraid.' InvestigateWest ( is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Reporter Kelsey Turner can be reached at kelsey@ or 503-893-2501.
The Hill
5 hours ago
- The Hill
Trump's war against DEI isn't going so well in Virginia
Apparently when President Trump says 'illegal DEI,' he means lawful and common-sense efforts to integrate public schools. At least, that's the takeaway from the Department of Education's new investigation against Fairfax County Public Schools. Trump officials claim Fairfax County violated federal law when it adopted an admissions policy designed to 'change the demographic make up' of its most competitive high school. This theory, which equates integration with segregation, dates back to Barry Goldwater, who remarked in 1964 that 'the Constitution is color-blind … and so it is just as wrong to compel children to attend certain schools for the sake of so-called integration as for the sake of segregation.' It seems Trump agrees. Unfortunately for him, the Supreme Court does not. Just last year, the court declined to overturn a ruling for Fairfax County. As I explained at the time, that decision made sense. Even as the Supreme Court has shifted hard right, decades of conservative case law — including from Chief Justice John Roberts — condone racial goals such as diversity, equality and inclusion. The new investigation tracks Trump's disregard for courts and his tendency toward bluster over substance. But in important respects, it also exposes that Trump's war on DEI lacks any moral and legal basis. Some context is helpful. For decades, Black advocates sought to desegregate Thomas Jefferson High School, one of the nation's top-ranked public schools. As recently as 2012, the NAACP filed a civil rights complaint alleging that the school's admissions policies discriminated against African American and Hispanic students and students with disabilities. Things shifted in 2020. As racial justice protests erupted across the globe, local leaders grappled with the fact that in a county with roughly 100,000 Black residents, Thomas Jefferson High School admitted so few Black students that the number was too small to report. The state convened a task force to examine the causes of this ongoing exclusion at Thomas Jefferson and other Virginia schools. Following a series of hearings, the board revised the school's admissions process, eliminating a $100 application fee and a standardized testing requirement. Contrary to ongoing claims that the new policy compromised 'merit,' the board raised the minimum GPA for admission from 3.0 to 3.5 and added an honors course requirement. The new policy also implemented a holistic evaluation that included new 'experience factors,' such as whether the applicant qualified for reduced meals or is an English language learner. The updated process also ensured that each middle school receive a number of seats equal to 1.5 percent of its eighth-grade class. The school board resolved that '[t]he admission process must use only race-neutral methods that do not seek to achieve any specific racial or ethnic mix, balance or targets.' This means that admissions officials are not told the race, ethnicity, sex or name of any applicant. In Supreme Court parlance, the entire admissions process was 'colorblind.' The new process produced promising results. In its inaugural year, Thomas Jefferson High School received 1,000 more applicants than the prior cycle. This larger applicant pool also 'included markedly more low-income students, English-language learners, and girls than had prior classes at TJ.' Consistent with the heightened GPA requirement, the admitted class's mean GPA was higher than in the five preceding years. The new process also yielded greater racial diversity. Black students comprised 10 percent of the applicant pool and received nearly 8 percent of offers and Hispanic students comprised 11 percent of the applicant pool and received over 11 percent of offers. The overall percentage of Asian American students decreased from the preceding year, but Asian Americans continued to enjoy the highest percentage yield of all racial groups. And as the Fourth Circuit detailed, Asian American students from historically underrepresented middle schools 'saw a sixfold increase in offers, and the number of low-income Asian American admittees to TJ increased to 51 — from a mere one in 2020.' In short, Thomas Jefferson High School adopted a 'race-neutral' process to pursue a set of goals that included increasing Black and Hispanic representation. This is the precise type of practice the Trump administration denigrates as 'illegal DEI.' Efforts to promote racial diversity do constitute DEI. But they are far from illegal. In fact, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard — the 2023 decision striking down Harvard University's formal consideration of applicant race — supports most of the DEI policies Trump now targets. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts deemed Harvard's underlying goals as 'worthy' and 'commendable.' Justice Brett Kavanaugh made the point more directly; writing for himself, Kavanaugh noted that 'racial discrimination still occurs and the effects of past racial discrimination still persist' and that 'universities still can, of course, act to undo the effects of past discrimination in many permissible ways that do not involve classification by race.' The actions of the high school square with Kavanaugh's call for policies that attend to race but do not differentiate between individual students on this basis. This should short-circuit the Department of Education's investigation against Fairfax County. But it is unlikely to stall Trump's desire to outlaw integration. The Pacific Legal Foundation, which initiated the lawsuit against Fairfax County and remains a force on the right, wants to revive Goldwater's hostile approach to integration. Consider the following FAQ on Pacific Legal's website: 'schools may use or not use standardized tests, essays, interviews, or auditions, as long as their reasons for using or not using them are not racial.' By this logic, a high school could lawfully eliminate an admissions fee if motivated by public relations concerns, but it would be unlawful to take that same action if done to decrease racial barriers that exclude low-income Black and Hispanic students. Now consider higher education. Per Pacific Legal, Harvard University could eliminate admissions preferences for the children of alumni and wealthy donors if done to appease alumni pressure. But it would be unlawful for Harvard to take the same action if the goal is increasing the number of Asian American students or mitigate unearned racial preferences that flow to wealthy white applicants. The upshot is that affirmative efforts to reduce racial inequality — everything Trump dubs 'illegal DEI' — remain legal and morally just. So, at least for now, integration does not equate to segregation. Jonathan Feingold is an associate professor at Boston University School of Law. He is an expert in affirmative action, antidiscrimination law, education law, and critical race theory.
