Jay-Z is making another push to revive his legal case against attorney Tony Buzbee after the woman who once accused the music mogul of rape formally recanted her allegations and said she never met him.
According to Rolling Stone, Jay Z filed a petition asking California’s Second District Court of Appeal to rehear his case against Buzbee and the Buzbee Law Firm. Carter argues that the woman’s new sworn declaration amounts to significant new evidence that deserves consideration before his extortion and defamation claims are permanently shut down.
“Jane Doe’s declaration proves that discovery would yield evidence supporting Carter’s claims. Fairness and due process require this court to grant rehearing,” Carter’s appellate filing states.
The move comes weeks after the California appeals court affirmed the dismissal of Carter’s lawsuit. In its September 9 opinion, the court said Carter had not produced sufficient evidence showing that Buzbee knowingly made false accusations or acted with reckless disregard for whether they were true.
Now, Carter says the factual picture has changed.
The woman filed a sworn declaration in Manhattan federal court on September 24 stating that her allegations against Carter were false. The declaration was submitted in connection with Carter’s separate legal action involving Buzbee and others.
“Shawn ‘Jay-Z’ Carter never raped me. I have never met or spoken to Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter never engaged in any inappropriate conduct toward me whatsoever,” she wrote.
“There is no truth to any of my claims against Mr. Carter,” she continued. “I understand my false accusations have caused Mr. Carter immense pain, suffering, and damage that can never be fully undone.”
Reuters reported that the woman also said she was not being paid for the statements in her declaration. Carter subsequently dismissed her as a defendant from his ongoing federal action while continuing his claims involving her former lawyers.
The recantation is especially important to Carter’s latest legal move because of how the California appellate court previously analyzed Buzbee’s conduct.
In its September ruling, the California Court of Appeal upheld the lower court’s decision granting Buzbee’s motion under California’s anti-SLAPP law, which protects certain speech and petitioning activity from lawsuits. The appellate court also concluded that Buzbee’s prelitigation communications were connected to anticipated litigation.
“The record contains no evidence Buzbee accused Carter of raping Jane Doe while knowing those statements to be false or with reckless disregard as to whether they were true,” Associate Justice Anne Richardson wrote in the unanimous decision.
The court said declarations submitted by Buzbee indicated that lawyers had investigated the woman’s account and that he subjectively believed her allegations.
Carter’s new petition argues that the accuser’s sworn reversal warrants another examination of that conclusion. According to Rolling Stone, Carter is seeking an opportunity to conduct limited discovery and attempt to establish what Buzbee and others knew about the allegations before Carter was publicly named.
“Carter asks only that he have the opportunity to prove his case through limited discovery on remand,” the petition states. “If the discovery shows what he expects, then the case should proceed to trial where a jury can decide who is right.”
The dispute stretches back to 2024.
According to the California appellate opinion, Buzbee represented the woman in litigation stemming from allegations connected to Sean “Diddy” Combs. The woman initially filed a federal lawsuit accusing Combs of sexually assaulting her when she was 13 and alleged that another unidentified male celebrity participated. Carter was later publicly identified as that second celebrity in an amended complaint.
Carter denied the allegations.
Before he was publicly named, Buzbee sent prelitigation demand letters concerning the accusations. Carter later sued Buzbee, alleging that those communications amounted to civil extortion and that subsequent statements were defamatory. Buzbee denied that characterization and maintained that sending a demand before litigation did not constitute extortion.
A Los Angeles court ultimately dismissed Carter’s California lawsuit after Buzbee invoked the state’s anti SLAPP protections. The Second District Court of Appeal affirmed that outcome in September 2026.
Meanwhile, the original sexual assault lawsuit did not survive.
According to Reuters, the woman eventually dismissed her civil case. Her September 2026 declaration went substantially further by formally disavowing her accusations against Carter. She also claimed that the lawyers handling the original matter filed it “without conducting any independent investigation, background inquiry, or due diligence, and without obtaining any corroboration of the allegations.”
Her account of why the original case ended also plays into Carter’s latest argument.
According to Rolling Stone, the woman said she began having doubts about her claims and later agreed to dismiss the lawsuit. She also stated, “I never received any threat from Mr. Carter or anyone acting on his behalf.”
Buzbee has pushed back against suggestions that his firm knowingly pursued false allegations.
In a statement reported by Rolling Stone after the recantation surfaced, Buzbee said several attorneys had dealt with the woman before he did and heard the same account.
“We have multiple lawyers (at least four) who dealt with Ms. Doe long before she met me. She gave the exact same story to each. If for some reason now she is claiming she lied to us and the court, that’s new information,” Buzbee said.
One of Buzbee’s attorneys, Jessica N. Meyers, also challenged the significance and reliability of the new declaration. According to Rolling Stone, Meyers described it in a court filing as a “bought-and-paid-for declaration,” while the publication noted that the filing offered no evidence establishing payment.
“In sum, there is no evidence that when the Buzbee Parties relied on Jane Doe’s multiple declarations they knew her to be a perjurer. Carter and his attorneys lack the same excuse,” Meyers wrote.
The woman herself has denied being paid for her recantation, according to Reuters.
Carter’s legal battle is also continuing on another front. According to Rolling Stone, his federal malicious prosecution case against Buzbee and his firm remains active in New York even after Carter dismissed Jane Doe from that action. Buzbee’s side has moved to dismiss those claims and has characterized Carter’s lawsuit as “improper” and “abusive.”
That means Carter’s latest petition is not simply about clearing his name from an allegation the accuser has now withdrawn. It is about whether her reversal gives him a legal pathway to reopen a California case that judges had already concluded could not proceed on the evidence previously before them.
The appeals court has not yet granted Carter the rehearing he is requesting. His filing asks the judges to reconsider their earlier decision in light of evidence that did not exist in its current sworn form when they reached that ruling.
For Carter, the central argument is now straightforward: the woman at the center of the underlying accusation has sworn that she never met him and that her claims were false, and he wants the opportunity to investigate whether the lawyers who pursued those claims had information that should have stopped them from doing so.
