UPDATED: 01/10/2019 4:15PM
Ashley Judd was one of dozens of women to come forward and accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment, but the actress suffered a loss in California federal court on January 9th, 2019 when U.S. District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez dismissed her sexual harassment claim against Weinstein. The claim is part of Judd’s April 2018 lawsuit that claims that Weinstein ruined her career after she refused his unwelcome sexual advances.
The claim was also dismissed in September by Gutierrez who said that, because Judd was not an employee of Weinsteins but just taking a meeting with him, California’s sexual harassment statute did not apply. Judd had filed to restore the claim after the state’s harassment laws were amended to include directors and producers.
Though Gutierrez stuck to his initial ruling, he did say that Judd could pursue her accusation that Weinstein tried to ruin her career after she rejected his advances by bad mouthing her to directors of projects like Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films.
Gutierrez was clear that he “is not determining whether Plaintiff was sexually harassed in the colloquial sense of the term,” but only whether or not the claim filed by Judd fell under the scope of the statute cited.