Three reality TV stars—an Amazing Race team and a Below Deck deckhand—have filed separate lawsuits against networks and producers.
The Amazing Race 37’s Jonathan and Ana are suing CBS, Paramount, and the show’s production companies for at least $8 million, while Below Deck season 3 deckhand Emile Kotze filed suit for $850 million.
What’s interesting is that they’re all representing themselves in court, which is referred to as pro se representation. Is that to save money on lawyers? Is that because actual lawyers wouldn’t take their cases?
Below Deck lawsuit
TMZ reported on Emile’s lawsuit Thursday, but had few details. So I went to PACER, the U.S. court database, and looked up Emile’s case, which has the number 1:2025cv04703.
What TMZ didn’t bother to mention is that Emile actually filed this last summer, on June 2, 2025. (Why would TMZ let context or information get in the way of a barely literate paragraph?)
Since last summer, the case hasn’t been going well for Emile. His original complaint is very simple, almost a memo, and has funny parts like this:
EMILE PETRUS KOTZE (Pro Se)
Email: [email protected]
Tel: (212) 555-1234
Temporary Address: New York, NY 10019
Did he just use a template and forget to update it? Did he use a lying plagiarism machine/chatbot and it didn’t know his address?
Anyway, I’ll let Judge Jeannette A. Vargas summarize his claims:
According to Plaintiff, he was “sexually harassed, manipulated, and subjected to degrading treatment captured on camera”; “misrepresented, coerced, and racially harassed”; and subjected to “unsafe working conditions.” … Plaintiff also avers that Defendants “systematically failed to protect [him] from abuse, manipulated contractual protections, retaliated against him for whistleblowing, and attempted to bind [him] to unenforceable arbitration clauses invalid under federal law.”
After filing the initial claim, Emile asked for an injunction to prevent the show from airing or streaming.
In a July 14, 2025, decision, the judge denied that, pointing out that Emile “failed” in his claim. He “avers that he will suffer irreparable harm without injunctive relief barring the airing of season 3 of Below Deck. Yet according to the pleadings, season 3 of Below Deck first aired ten years ago, in 2015.”
Sick legal burn!
Of course, sexual harassment and unsafe conditions are genuine problems in workplaces, and he should have his day in court to prove what happened. Yet maybe he should also have a lawyer who can help him do this correctly.
The case is still ongoing, but the judge has issued three opinions, all denying motions Emile filed. The most-recent, on Oct. 1, 2025, when the judge wrote that Emile “has now filed eight motions essentially seeking the same relief, with “no new facts or intervening change of law” and is “on notice” that if he keeps it up with “duplicative and successive motions, the Court may place limits on Plaintiff’s ability to file motions in this matter without prior Court approval.”
The judge noted that while “pro se litigants are afforded a great deal of latitude, they are not allowed to abuse court processes by continuing to file duplicative motions.”
Oof. And speaking of oof…
Amazing Race 37 lawsuit
Jonathan orders Ana around on Amazing Race 37 episode 5, not that this is specific to episode 5 (Image from Amazing Race via CBS)
The Amazing Race 37’s Jonathan and Ana want “a formal written correction and public acknowledgement” for harm they suffered, which they describe as “systematic, deliberate, and malicious defamation of Plaintiff Jonathan Russell Towns in connection with Defendants’ production, editing, marketing and national broadcast” of season 37.
Jonathan’s behavior on the show was the subject of a lot of conversation, including in my recaps (“a miscreant remains”, “brings out the worst in some couples”)
While the race was airing, Jonathan revealed that his “extreme reactions” on the race were because he has autism. That’s mentioned in their lawsuit, which Deadline first reported yesterday.
They—again, this legal complaint was written by Jonathan and Ana, or at least, has their names on it as they don’t have a lawyer—also say they discovered cheating.
Their lawsuit [PDF] alleges that, “As early as the first leg of the competition, Plaintiffs observed a pattern of questionable conduct that materially influenced the outcome of the competition,” and “communicated their concerns.”
They say producers didn’t respond but instead the production became “overtly hostile toward” them, and there was “continued and repeated sabotage” of their race efforts, and then, on TV, portrayed Jonathan “as a morally depraved, brutal and abusive spouse.”
While they note that neither producers nor Jonathan and Ana knew his diagnosis at the time, Jonathan’s behavior was “observable to Defendants’ production personnel as indicators of significant psychological and neurological distress warranting intervention.” They claim producers never offered help and say his meltdowns were “not volitional acts of cruelty or intentional interpersonal aggression. They were acute neurological stress responses consistent with autism spectrum disorder under conditions of sustained sensory overload, perceived injustice, disrupted predictability, sleep deprivation, and prolonged environmental stress.”
There’s a curious part where they discuss something Phil Keoghan said in an interview, though they don’t identify him by name, which is weird enough. But the claim is Phil said Jonathan was “tough” on Ana and that is “without precedent in the modern history of the program.” Modern history—what does that even mean?
In the next section, Jonathan and Ana allege “a sustained media effort to disseminate negative media coverage,” and the only evidence is this:
“A single identified publication disseminated no fewer than thirteen negative articles concerning Plaintiff Jonathan Towns over the course of the season — a volume of coverage that, to Plaintiffs’ knowledge and belief, has no antecedent in the program’s history with respect to any individual cast member”
Ironically, they don’t identify the identified publication. And considering the number of publications that recap Amazing Race, which had 12 episodes that season, they probably could have gone into much more detail about how people reacted to what was included in the edit.
Maybe having an actual lawyer would be helpful here?
As this was just filed, Paramount and CBS had no comment for Deadline, and there’s been no action in court. I’ll keep following the legal proceedings—which can sometimes take years, as we’ve seen recently.
Reality TV contracts tend to require arbitration, thus concealing the outcome from the public; Bravo tried to do that with Leah McSweeney’s lawsuit, for example.
And most reality TV contracts (read some here) also include clauses allowing producers to edit people however they like, even fictionalizing them. That’s completely absurd, yet people agree to it. Can these reality stars prove in court that those contract clauses aren’t legal, and/or what happened violated laws?
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