Everything You Need to Know About Kesha's Case Against Dr. Luke

​Last week, the legal battle to #FreeKesha hit a roadblock. The singer has been trying to get out of her contract with Kemosabe Entertainment, part of Sony Records, because she says her producer, Dr. Luke (Lukasz Gottwald), sexually assaulted her. She filed a lawsuit in 2014, Dr. Luke quickly responded by filing a defamation suit against her and her mother, Pebe, whom he said were spreading malicious lies about him online and within the music industry. Kesha filed a request for a temporary injunction, which would allow her to record music elsewhere while her case is pending. On Friday, her request for that injunction was denied. 

The bar Kesha had to meet to win her preliminary injunction was a high one: She wasn't proving the validity of her assault claims. Rather, she had to show that not being awarded the injunction would cause her irreparable harm — the harm being that she was keeping her career on ice to avoid working with her alleged rapist. Dr. Luke told the court he would allow Kesha to record albums for Sony without him, mitigating the harm she said she was suffering. The court more or less sided with Dr. Luke, adding that an injunction was an extraordinary remedy (had she won, her contract with Sony would have for all intents and purposes been voided). 

Setting courtroom decisions aside, Kesha's case is a disturbing one in that it speaks to just how little female pop stars are actually valued by the industry that controls them — an industry that makes them professionally dependent on older, more powerful, and sometimes unscrupulous men. An industry that makes them targets.

Consider how Dr. Luke and his lawyers describe his relationship to Kesha in this brief: "Kesha is a recording artist and songwriter. Gottwald is a Grammy-nominated songwriter and producer of smash hit musical recordings." According to another brief, Dr. Luke devoted "the better part of a decade to transforming Kesha from an unknown entity into a well-known recording star." And Kesha, according to that same brief, is a known liar — an allegation based on what sound like typical teenage fibs and misbehavior, including Kesha falsely claiming her father, with whom she doesn't seem to have much of a relationship, was in a famous British rock band, and her getting into a fight with her mother and locking her out of a hotel room without shoes or money. Dr. Luke paints Kesha as alternately a liar and a blank slate he discovered and molded, crediting himself with "making Kesha a star." It's a twisted power dynamic. 

For her part, Kesha says she dropped out of high school and moved to Los Angeles at the urging of famous record producer who subsequently turned from mentor to abuser. Her allegations are stunning: She says Dr. Luke drugged and raped her; that in an effort to intimidate and desensitize Kesha to abuse he told her about pressuring his wife to have an abortion, and also went out to nightclubs while his wife was pregnant, where he would publicly digitally penetrate other women; that he made continuous sexual advances toward her; that he forced her to take drugs and alcohol so that he could make sexual advances on her; that if she ever told anyone about the assaults he would destroy her and her family; that he bombarded her with insults about her body and her worth, including telling her that she was a "fat fucking refrigerator;" and that Dr. Luke's abuse eventually forced Kesha into rehab for bulimia. 

Dr. Luke says Kesha's claims are false. (Earlier today he denied raping her, tweeting: "I didn't rape Kesha and I have never had sex with her. Kesha and I were friends for many years and she was like my little sister.​") According to him, she was extraordinarily grateful for his work until she and her mother got greedy and started accusing him of rape to get out of their contract. 

Dr. Luke's strongest argument that Kesha's allegations are untrue is 2011 deposition testimony from an earlier court case between Kesha and a former manager, in which both Kesha and her mother testify that Dr. Luke never gave Kesha roofies, as she now alleges, and that he never made sexual advances on her. 

In that case, Kesha was embroiled in a legal battle with her former manager David Sonenberg, and his communications firm, DAS. After Dr. Luke "discovered" her, Kesha brought Sonenberg on as her representative. Sonenberg tried to bring Kesha over to Warner Bros. Records, but the relationship soured, and she eventually ended up firing him and returning to work with Dr. Luke, at which point Sonenberg sued for his commission and Kesha counter-sued. According to Sonenberg's lawsuit, even in 2005 Kesha was saying that Dr. Luke "engaged in certain unethical and unlawful actions against her and that she did not want Gottwald to be part of her career going forward." As a part of that suit, Kesha and her mom, Pebe, were deposed, and both denied very specific allegations of abuse: That Dr. Luke gave Kesha roofies and that he sexually assaulted her. 

Kesha says that she offered false testimony because she was living in fear of Dr. Luke. That she and her mother may have lied under oath doesn't help their case; on the other hand, the fact that these same allegations were known by her then-manager years before this latest lawsuit commenced suggests that she's not making them up now to get out of this contract. 

Other female artists are now speaking out on Kesha's behalf, including Demi Lovato, Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga, and Kelly Clarkson, who previously worked with Dr. Luke and intimates that she has nothing nice to say about him. ​But Kesha remains in a particularly awful situation, stuck in a contract with a man she says raped and abused her, within a company that she says looked the other way  — a company that even now seems to be doing nothing about an employee accused of sexual violence. If Kesha's claims are true, this would be as if your manager at work raped you, and when you tried to quit your job and work elsewhere you were told you couldn't because you were still on contract — and when you brought the matter to court, your company offered to let you work with a different boss, and that was thought an appropriate and fair remedy. ​

However the #FreeKesha movement turns out, it's worth considering what her case says more broadly about the music industry, in which men have near wholesale control over the female pop stars they represent, produce, and, to a disturbing degree, own. That is a business model ripe for abuse. It's crucial to #FreeKesha, yes. But her case may just be one tiny bubble atop a deep and rotten pond. 

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