Megan Thee Stallion and Roc Nation are headed to a jury trial in the lawsuit brought by her former photographer, after a federal judge refused to end the case before it reaches a courtroom. US District Judge Gregory H. Woods issued the ruling on Friday, August 7, denying most of what both sides asked for and leaving the central disputes for a jury to sort out.
The case belongs to Emilio Garcia, who worked as Megan’s personal photographer beginning in 2018 and filed suit in 2024 against Megan, whose legal name is Megan Pete, her touring company Hot Girl Touring, and Roc Nation. The filing landed with a set of allegations that ran through the blogs for weeks, chief among them Garcia’s claim that during a 2022 trip to Ibiza he was trapped in a moving vehicle while Megan had sex with another woman in front of him. Garcia, who is gay, said the incident left him mortified and contributed to a hostile work environment, and he alleged he was later fat shamed, underpaid and eventually pushed out.
What happened Friday was a summary judgment ruling, which is the stage where a judge decides whether the evidence is clear enough that no trial is necessary. If the facts are genuinely in dispute, the case goes to a jury. Megan’s side asked the court to resolve everything without a trial. Woods declined, writing that the accounts of Garcia’s employment and working conditions conflict too much to settle on paper.
The claims that survived are the money claims. A jury will decide whether Garcia was improperly classified as an independent contractor rather than an employee, whether he was owed additional wages for work he performed, whether he faced discrimination under New York law, and whether the defendants retaliated against him after he complained about his pay. The independent contractor question is the quiet one with the biggest stakes, because how a worker is classified determines what they are owed in overtime, protections and back pay, and misclassification cases in the entertainment industry tend to settle expensively when they lose.
The claims that died are the ones the internet actually cared about. Woods sided with Megan on the California harassment claim, finding insufficient evidence that Garcia was singled out for strip club appearances because of his sexual orientation, and pointing to the fact that members of her team were generally expected to attend those outings regardless. He also dismissed Garcia’s retaliation claims under New York city and state human rights laws, concluding that leaving a strip club during a 2022 New York outing and staying quiet about what he says he saw in the vehicle in Ibiza did not amount to formally opposing discrimination under those statutes.
So the Ibiza allegation is no longer the engine of this lawsuit. It remains part of the record and part of Garcia’s account of the working environment, but the specific retaliation claims built around it are gone. What is going in front of a jury is a wage and classification fight, plus a discrimination claim under New York law.
Megan’s legal team has denied everything from the start and has not softened. Her attorney Alex Spiro has called the allegations false and fabricated, and has argued that Garcia took routine complaints about his wages and attached claims about sex, debauchery and workplace harassment for the purpose of creating a media firestorm. Spiro has also described Garcia as a con artist manipulating the court system to serve as his publicist. Garcia’s attorney, Ron Zambrano, said his client is looking forward to having his day in court.
It is worth being precise about what a ruling like this does and does not mean, because a lot of the coverage is blurring it. Woods did not find that Garcia’s allegations are true. He found that the evidence is contested enough that a jury has to hear it. Megan and Roc Nation can still win at trial on every surviving claim.
The case has moved around considerably in two years. Garcia originally filed in California. Megan’s attorneys argued the suit had no legitimate connection to that state, given that the alleged incident happened abroad and neither the plaintiff nor Megan, a Miami resident, is based there. The case was transferred to federal court in New York, where Woods dismissed several of the original claims while allowing portions of the hostile work environment and wage claims to continue. Friday’s ruling is the next narrowing, and the last one before a jury gets it.
No trial date has been set.
