Two amicus briefs filed on Friday (April 3) in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit have backed UMG Recordings in its defense against Drake’s defamation appeal over Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us.
Both briefs support the dismissal of Drake’s lawsuit and urge the appeals court to affirm the October 2025 ruling by Judge Jeannette Vargas, who found that the diss track “constitutes protected opinion rather than actionable defamation.”
The filings, obtained by MBW, can be read in full here (1) and here (2).
The first brief was submitted by the Floyd Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression at Yale Law School and Professor Lyrissa Lidsky, described in the filing as one of the country’s leading defamation scholars.
Lidsky holds the Raymond & Miriam Ehrlich Chair in U.S. Constitutional Law at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law and is a co-reporter for the in-progress Restatement (Third) of Torts: Defamation and Privacy.
The brief was prepared by the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School, with John Langford serving as counsel of record alongside David A. Schulz.
The second brief was filed on behalf of a group of social scientists and legal scholars from institutions across the country, represented by Jack I. Lerner of the UCI Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. The amici include scholars from Howard University, the University of Richmond, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Tulane University, and other institutions.
‘Consent is a complete defense’
The Floyd Abrams Institute brief advances an argument that wasn’t previously central in the case: that Drake consented to the allegedly defamatory statements, barring his lawsuit under established defamation law.
“Suppose a self-assured boxer challenges the world champion to a prize fight, is knocked out on live television, and, with bruised ego and body, files a lawsuit for battery.”
Floyd Abrams Institute amicus brief
The brief opens with an analogy: “Suppose a self-assured boxer challenges the world champion to a prize fight, is knocked out on live television, and, with bruised ego and body, files a lawsuit for battery. That lawsuit would fail at the outset for a simple but important reason: the challenger consented to the fight, and consent is a classic defense to an intentional tort.”
“Defamation is also an intentional tort, and defamation claims are likewise foreclosed by consent,” the brief states.
Under New York law, the brief argues, consent to defamation is an “absolute defense,” whether it is expressly given or implied by the circumstances.
The brief’s central claim is that Drake specifically invited the statements he now challenges in court. It points to Drake’s Taylor Made Freestyle, released on April 19, 2024, in which he urged Lamar to continue the rap battle and — the brief alleges — “specifically encouraged Lamar to ‘talk about him[—i.e., Drake—]likin’ young girls.’”
Lamar responded days later with Not Like Us, released on May 4, 2024, containing the lyrics Drake now alleges are defamatory. According to the brief, Drake then confirmed in The Heart Part 6, released on May 5, 2024, that “This Epstein angle was the shit I expected.”
“It is difficult to imagine a clearer call-and-response,” the brief states.
The brief also addresses Drake’s framing of the lawsuit as being about UMG’s promotional conduct rather than Lamar’s lyrics. Drake’s complaint makes no mention of Taylor Made Freestyle and contends that the suit “is not about the artist who created ‘Not Like Us.’ It is, instead, entirely about UMG, the music company that decided to publish, promote, exploit, and monetize allegations that it understood were not only false, but dangerous.”
The amici reject that argument: “By urging Lamar to respond in a diss track and specifically inviting Lamar to put allegedly defamatory lyrics in that diss track, Drake cannot now escape the applicability of a consent defense by suing the record company that published that track and challenging a scale-of-dissemination he had every reason to anticipate.”
The brief also argues that dismissal at the pleading stage is appropriate, citing New York courts’ recognition that resolving defamation claims early “has particular value, where appropriate, in libel cases, so as not to protract litigation through discovery and trial and thereby chill the exercise of constitutionally protected freedoms.”
‘Diss track lyrics are far from factual representations’
The second amicus brief, filed by the group of social scientists and legal scholars, takes a different but complementary approach, arguing that rap lyrics — and diss track lyrics in particular — should not be treated as factual statements.
“Drake’s defamation claim rests on the assumption that every word of ‘Not Like Us’ should be taken literally, as a factual representation,” the brief states. “This assumption is not just faulty — it is dangerous.”
The scholars’ brief provides an account of the history and conventions of rap music, describing diss tracks as “an emblematic and long-standing feature of the history and cultural context of rap” that are “understood by audiences not to represent factual assertions about the opposing artist, but rather to demonstrate skill and dominance meant to build allegiance and win competitions through clever wordplay, hyperbole, bluster, and demonstrations of disrespect.”
The brief also argues that treating rap lyrics as literal statements threatens First Amendment rights and risks introducing racial bias in judicial proceedings, citing three decades of empirical research. According to the filing, studies have shown that violent lyrics labeled as rap music are, on average, “interpreted as more literal and more threatening than identical lyrics represented as a different genre.”
The scholars note that Drake himself previously endorsed a “Protect Black Art” campaign criticizing the use of rap lyrics as literal evidence in court. “Though Drake has previously acknowledged this danger publicly, he now paradoxically and problematically embraces it,” the brief states.
The amici urge the Second Circuit to establish “a presumption that artistic expression is not a factual admission,” citing a 2021 ruling in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania which held that “courts should start with a presumption that art is art, not a statement of fact.”
Drake filed his defamation lawsuit against UMG in January 2025. The case was dismissed by Judge Vargas in October 2025. Drake appealed the ruling in January 2026, and UMG filed its response brief late last month.
Both Drake and Kendrick Lamar release their records via UMG and its Republic Records and Interscope labels, respectively.
