<\/p>\n
\n A federal judge tossed out Blake Lively\u2019s sexual harassment claims against her \u201cIt Ends With Us\u201d director Justin Baldoni, roughly a month before the high-stakes trial was set to begin. The judge threw out 10 of the 13 claims in Lively\u2019s lawsuit, leaving only three claims against defendants that don\u2019t include Baldoni personally.\n <\/p>\n
\n In her civil complaint, Lively accused Baldoni, who also co-starred in the film, of sexually harassing her during the movie\u2019s production and then orchestrating a smear campaign to retaliate against her for speaking up about the alleged mistreatment. Baldoni denied the allegations.\n <\/p>\n
\n In an order issued Thursday, District Judge Lewis Liman threw out the majority of the claims in Lively\u2019s lawsuit, including sexual harassment and defamation. Some of the claims, including the ones involving sexual harassment, were nixed due to legal technicalities, such as Lively being considered an independent contractor rather than an employee, a point emphasized by Lively\u2019s attorneys following the judge\u2019s order.\n <\/p>\n
\n Out of thirteen claims, only three remain in the case \u2013 retaliation, aiding and abetting retaliation, and breach of contract. Baldoni is not a defendant in any of the remaining claims. One claim against his production company, Wayfarer, remains.\n <\/p>\n
\n In a statement to celebrity.land, representatives for Wayfarer said they were \u201cvery pleased\u201d the court dismissed all sexual harassment claims and claims against individual defendants.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThese were very serious allegations, and we are grateful to the Court for its careful review of the facts, law and voluminous evidence that was provided,\u201d the statement said. \u201cWhat\u2019s left is a significantly narrowed case, and we look forward to presenting our defense to the remaining claims in court.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Jury selection for the trial, which would have been the climax of more than year-long legal back-and-forth that generated countless headlines, is scheduled to begin on May 18.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThis case has always been and will remain focused on the devasting retaliation and the extraordinary steps the defendants took to destroy Blake Lively\u2019s reputation because she stood up for safety on the set and that is the case that is going to trial,\u201d Sigrid McCawley, an attorney for Lively, said in a statement to celebrity.land.\n <\/p>\n
\n The statement added that for Lively, \u201cthe greatest measure of justice is that the people and the playbook behind these coordinated digital attacks have been exposed and are already being held accountable by other women they\u2019ve targeted.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cShe looks forward to testifying at trial and continuing to shine a light on this vicious form of online retaliation so that it becomes easier to detect and fight,\u201d the statement concluded.\n <\/p>\n
\n celebrity.land has reached out to Baldoni\u2019s attorney for comment.\n <\/p>\n
\n The alleged harassment occurred during the production of \u201cIt Ends With Us,\u201d the 2024 movie based on Colleen Hoover\u2019s hit novel of the same name. The story centers around domestic violence in a couple, portrayed on-screen by Lively and Baldoni.\n <\/p>\n
\n In December 2024, the New York Times was the first to report that Lively had filed a complaint<\/a> with the California Civil Rights Department about Baldoni\u2019s alleged conduct during and after filming. Those complaints are typically confidential. She later filed a civil complaint in New York federal court against Baldoni, his production company Wayfarer Studios and several others.\n <\/p>\n \n In the complaint, Lively alleged Baldoni made sexual comments towards women on set and spoke about his personal sex life, including his \u201cprevious pornography addiction.\u201d He also allegedly improvised intimacy that had not been choreographed, including in some footage that has since been publicly released<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Baldoni said in court filings the alleged behavior amounted to \u201cno more than miscommunications and awkward comments,\u201d and some of the conversations were relevant since the movie grappled with intimate adult themes. Regardless, the production team listened to Lively\u2019s concerns at the time and implemented changes she requested, he said.\n <\/p>\n \n Lively alleged Baldoni and his team \u201cweaponize[d] a digital army\u201d after the movie\u2019s release to shift the narrative against her.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cTo safeguard against the risk of Ms. Lively ever revealing the truth about Mr. Baldoni, the Baldoni-Wayfarer team created, planted, amplified, and boosted content designed to eviscerate Ms. Lively\u2019s credibility,\u201d she wrote in her complaint. \u201cThey engaged in the same techniques to bolster Mr. Baldoni\u2019s credibility and suppress any negative content about him.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n In court filings, Baldoni\u2019s lawyers argued his public relations team engaged in legal, standard activity after Lively \u201cset out to destroy his reputation.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt was not illegal for Baldoni to promote positive content about himself or truthful narratives about various events. That Lively\u2019s reputation may have suffered is a result of her own ill-advised public statements and actions,\u201d his attorneys wrote. \u201cThis is a dispute about Hollywood reputations, not genuine legal wrongs.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n In January 2025, Baldoni filed a $400 million defamation lawsuit<\/a> against Lively and her superstar husband Ryan Reynolds, alleging they \u201chijacked\u201d his film and attempted to destroy his career. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit<\/a> in June. The judge\u2019s ruling did not address the merits of Baldoni\u2019s complaint but rather held that Lively\u2019s sexual harassment claims were protected by law and could not form the basis of a defamation claim.\n <\/p>\n \n The legal battle between the Hollywood stars has often played out in the public eye. In February 2025<\/a>, Baldoni\u2019s team published a website containing texts and an alleged timeline relating to Lively\u2019s claims. In January, the court unsealed evidence including dozens of texts between Lively and her close friend Taylor Swift.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n This story has been updated with additional information.<\/em>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.celebrity.land.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A federal judge tossed out Blake Lively\u2019s sexual harassment claims against her \u201cIt Ends With Us\u201d director Justin Baldoni, roughly a month before the high-stakes trial was set to begin. The judge threw out 10 of the 13 claims in Lively\u2019s lawsuit, leaving only three claims against defendants that don\u2019t include Baldoni personally. In her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2356215,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2356214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Blake-Livelys-sexual-harassment-claims-against-Justin-Baldoni-tossed-out.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2356214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2356214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2356214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2356216,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2356214\/revisions\/2356216"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2356215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2356214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2356214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2356214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}