Taylor Swift’s $1 sexual assault suit cited by Justice Elena Kagan in Supreme Court case 

Taylor Swift’s $1 sexual assault suit was cited by Justice Elena Kagan in a religious speech Supreme Court case.

Kagan discussed ‘the most famous nominal damages case I know of in recent time’ after Chike Uzuegbunam sued Georgia Gwinnett College for allegedly telling him he wasn’t allowed to proselytize his faith on campus in 2016.

While the college changed its free speech policy one year later and asked for Uzuegbunam to drop the case, the former student is still seeking nominal damages to possibly cover attorney fees or simply set a precedence, similar to Swift’s symbolic $1 award when she successfully sued radio host David ‘Jackson’ Mueller for groping her in 2013.

‘A few years ago, [Swift] brought a suit against a radio host for sexually assaulting her, and she said, ‘I’m not really interested in your money, I just want $1. And, that dollar is going to represent something both to me and to the world of women who have experienced what I’ve experienced.’

A U.S. district court and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals declared the case to be moot after the college changed its free speech policy, but the former student is waiting on a judge to declare a violation of his rights. 

Uzuegbunam filed a suit against the college after campus police stopped him from discussing and passing out literature regarding his religion, citing an ‘expressive activity’ policy which encouraged religious conversations to be held in a free speech zone.

After securing one of the two available spots in the zone, he was reprimanded by authorities once again as he was only allowed to pass out materials and not speak loudly about his faith.  

In August 2017, an eight-member jury ruled in favor of Swift after the pop singer accused former radio host David Mueller of groping her during a meet-and-greet photo session in June 2013 at the Pepsi Center. 

‘Nobody thinks that being sexual assaulted is really only worth a dollar. Nobody thinks that. It’s worth a lot more than that,’ Kagan told Andrew Pinson, who was defending the college. ‘But that’s all she wanted. She wanted to prove a point. 

‘That’s what happened: The jury gave her $1. And, it was an unquestionable physical harm. But, she just asked for this $1 to say that she had been harmed. Why not?’ 

‘Justice Kagan’s question suggested that really what Taylor Swift wanted was, you know, vindication of the moral right, the legal right, that sexual assault is reprehensible and wrong,’ Justice Amy Coney Barrett said. 

In a symbolic nod, Taylor only requested a $1 payout as her attorney, Doug Baldridge said at the time: ‘A single dollar on the counter claim is of immeasurable value. It says no means no and for every one women to determine was it to be tolerated with her body.’

Mueller had first sued the singer, her mother and radio promotions director Frank Bell in 2015, accusing them of interfering with his $150,000-a-year contract as a radio DJ in Denver by pressuring his employer, KYGO radio, to fire him. 

Swift countersued Mueller for assault and battery after he sued her for falsely accusing him of groping her, costing him his job. The judge threw out his lawsuit against Swift, saying he could not prove that her claims got him fired from radio station KYGO.