‘American Idol’ racism lawsuit dismissed, at least for now

For those of you who have been following the “American Idol” racism lawsuit over the past few years, it’s been a strange one. A collection of African-American contestants from the show banded together, and accused production company FremantleMedia North America, 21st Century Fox, and producer Nigel Lythgoe of racial discrimination over the way that they were dismissed from the competition. This spanned back several seasons.

Today, Reuters reports that a federal judge dismissed the claims brought against the show; in the case of many of them, they were dismissed due to the plaintiffs waiting too long to file their claims. As for others brought by former contestant Chris Golightly, there was not enough evidence to back up the claims.

It is possible that this suit is not completely over just yet, but we have no real idea at the moment how the defendants will want to continue to pursue this. It’s going to be very difficult for them, and we always thought that it was given that Ruben Studdard, Fantasia, Jordin Sparks, and Candice Glover have all gone on to win this competition. There isn’t a statistical anomaly here compared to the percentage of black Americans, and given how far many other contestants of various races and demographics have gone on the show, this evidence is even cloudier.

Ultimately, we still feel like the problem here is that “American Idol” has very specific rules, and while you could argue the enforcement of them from one person to the next, it is very hard to prove that someone was treated differently for breaking a rule compared to someone else. Most of these plaintiffs were all dismissed from the show in violation of something in the contract.

On a lighter note, the show’s 14th season is going to be premiering on Fox this January. Read more about that here, and be sure to also sign up to get some other TV news sent right to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo via Fox.)