Lizzo is facing another explosive lawsuit filed by a former employee.
On Thursday (Sept. 21), Asha Daniels — a clothing designer who worked on Lizzo’s Special Tour earlier this year — filed a complaint in Los Angeles Superior Court alleging sexual and racial harassment, disability discrimination, assault, illegal retaliatory termination and more. In addition to Lizzo, the lawsuit names wardrobe manager Amanda Nomura, tour manager Carlina Gugliotta and Lizzo’s Big Grrrl Big Touring company as defendants.
In the lawsuit, Daniels claims that after being hired to join the superstar’s world tour in February 2023 to alter and repair the wardrobe she’d previously designed for Lizzo’s dancers, she was “almost immediately…introduced to [a] culture of racism and bullying” and that she “suffered constant anxiety and panic attacks” as a result. In one allegation, she claims that Lizzo’s dancers were forced to change in “small, tight changing areas…with little to no privacy” and that the stage crew, “primarily white males, would lewdly gawk, sneer, and giggle” while watching them dress. She alleges that after expressing concern to Nomura about the lack of privacy, the wardrobe manager “laughed” and “advised” her not to tell anyone else about the issue or try to fix it.
The complaint contextualizes these incidents as part of “a set up to humiliate, degrade, alienate, and, in some cases, fire, the Black female performers.” Notably, three of these dancers — Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams and Noelle Rodriguez — made similar allegations after filing suit against Lizzo and Big Grrrl Big Touring in August. Their attorney, Ron Zambrano of West Coast Employment Lawyers, is also representing Daniels in her case.
While Lizzo isn’t directly implicated in any of the incidents outlined in Daniels’ complaint, the “About Damn Time” singer is effectively accused of turning a blind eye to the toxic behavior of her employees, including Daniels’ direct boss Nomura, who bears the brunt of the allegations.
“Throughout the entirety of her employment,” the lawsuit alleges, Daniels — a Black woman — witnessed Nomura making “racist and fatphobic comments,” including by mocking Lizzo and her background dancers, “doing an offensive stereotypical impression of a Black woman” and referring to Black women on the tour as “‘dumb,’ ‘useless’ and ‘fat.’” After allegedly confronting Nomura over her behavior, Daniels claims Nomura “ignored” her and proceeded to directly target her with harassment.
In one particularly inflammatory allegation, Daniels claims that Nomura rolled “a heavy rack of clothing” over Daniels’ foot. When Daniels allegedly told Nomura she needed to sit down “as her foot was in serious pain,” she says Nomura “shoved” her into the clothing rack “while asserting Plaintiff should not make excuses about her foot.” Claiming that the shove from Nomura caused her to “roll her ankle,” Daniels says that when she showed up for work the following day wearing Crocs to “minimize the pain,” Nomura demanded that she change into tennis shoes even after Daniels told her they were painful to walk in.
The suit accuses Nomura of a litany of other offenses, including making threatening statements against Daniels and the rest of the crew “on several occasions,” shoving a crew member after the crew member threatened to quit and saying that she would “kill a bitch if it came down to it” if anyone threatened her job. She also claims that Nomura discouraged her from interacting directly with Lizzo or Lizzo’s boyfriend — and that if she ever did, she should avoid dressing “attractively” to avoid the singer becoming “jealous.”
More broadly, Daniels claims she experienced frequent sexual harassment by the Big Grrrl Big Touring team. Among other offenses, she alleges that a backstage manager “sent a photo graphically depicting male genitalia” on a group chat that included her and more than 30 other tour employees. In another accusation that distinctly echoes the lawsuit filed by Lizzo’s former dancers, Daniels says she witnessed Nomura, crew members and Lizzo’s management “openly discussing hiring sex workers for lewd sex acts, attending sex shows, and buying hard drugs” and that she felt pressured to join those activities.
Daniels further claims that after informing Gugliotta of the behavior she’d witnessed — and after being “informed” that her complaints were relayed to Lizzo — she was fired by Lizzo’s team roughly a month after she began work on the tour. On the day she was fired but before she was informed of her termination, she also alleges she was “denied medical care” after suffering “an allergic reaction” and “pressured” to continue working after informing Nomura and Lizzo’s management about it.
In the aftermath of her experiences, Daniels claims she “continues to suffer ongoing anxiety and PTSD,” “migraines,” “brain fog, and “fatigue” from the experience.
Gugliotta and a representative for Lizzo did not immediately respond to Billboard‘s request for comment. A contact for Nomura could not immediately be located.
Daniels is asking for damages including unpaid wages, loss of earnings and deferred compensation; general damages “including but not limited to” emotional distress; other special damages including for medical expenses; punitive damages; and more.
Two days after the August lawsuit was filed, Lizzo refuted the allegations on social media, stating the dancers’ claims were as “unbelievable as they sound and too outrageous to not be addressed.”
“These sensationalized stories are coming from former employees who have already publicly admitted that they were told their behavior on tour was inappropriate and unprofessional,” she added. Later that day, the dancers appeared on CNN This Morning to rehash their allegations and called Lizzo’s statement “disheartening” and “incredibly frustrating.”
Two weeks later, Lizzo’s Big Grrrls dance team released a statement in support of the singer, saying they “had the time of our lives” on the tour and continuing, “The commitment to character and culture taking precedence over every movement and moment has been one of the Greatest lessons and Blessings that we could possibly could ask for.”
Following the initial lawsuit, lawyers for the dancers stated that six more people had approached them with similar stories about Lizzo, though Daniels’ lawsuit is the first to emerge in the nearly two months since.
Lizzo is due to be honored with the Black Music Action Coalition’s Quincy Jones Humanitarian Award at the organization’s 2023 gala on Thursday.
