On July 14, 2023, William Briggs and Halena Ngo co-authored “Ninth Circuit Slides Off Slope with Determination that Rap Music Gives Rise to Sex Discrimination Claim” in the Daily Journal. The following is an excerpt:
Like Jazz before it, the ascendency of rap music from marginalized communities to mainstream pop culture demonstrates the creative, economic, and political power of Black artists in the United States. But the history of these genres reflects another, more disturbing pattern: disparate treatments from a justice system run by individuals clouded by their own prejudices against the same Black artists who provide such valuable commercial and cultural capital. Thus, when a court holds that music can give rise to a sex discrimination claim, but bases this holding on facts consisting of only rap music, we must see this for what it is: an implicit attack on a traditionally Black art form and, beyond that, a slippery slope to censorship that endangers the 1st amendment right to freedom of expression.