Between 2020 and 2023, Megan Thee Stallion was trapped in an ongoing and intense legal battle with Canadian rapper and singer Tory Lanez, who was eventually sentenced to ten years in prison for an LA shooting. However, Megan will now be entering a new legal battle—this time with a former employee.
This time, Megan is not the plaintiff but the defendant, as her former cameraman, Emilio Garcia, accuses the ‘Hiss’ emcee of sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment.
The lawsuit, filed in a California court, alleges that the rapper’s (real name Megan Pete) “conduct created a hostile work environment for the plaintiff, making the conditions of his employment intolerable in direct contravention of various statutes and state law decisions.”
Garcia was a part-time cameraman for Pete between July 2018 and September 2019, when he quit his other jobs to work full-time for the ‘Savage’ musician. However, the lawsuit claims he was told “unexpectedly” in June 2023 that “his services would no longer be required by Pete.”
This latest lawsuit accuses Megan Thee Stallion of violating the US’ Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). One of the violations detailed in the lawsuit alleged that while in Ibiza, Pete and Garcia were in an SUV with three other females when the rapper “and one of the other women start having sex right beside [him].” Garcia “could not get out of the car as it was both moving and he was in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country.”
According to Garcia, Pete told him, “Don’t ever discuss what you saw,” and began hurling “fat-shaming comments” at him. Garcia’s attorneys also alleged that the cameraman saw “a change in how he was treated and saw a decrease in the number of bookings he received from [Megan Thee Stallion].”
Garcia’s attorney, Ron Zambrano, has asserted that “Megan just needs to pay our client what he’s due, own up to her behaviour and quit this sort of sexual harassment and fat-shaming conduct. Emilio should never have been put in a position of having to be in the vehicle with her while she had sex with another woman. ‘Inappropriate’ is putting it lightly. Exposing this behaviour to employees is definitely illegal.”