Raquel Leviss’ “revenge porn” and privacy claims against her Vanderpump Rules co-star Ariana Madix are moving forward after a judge issued a key ruling denying Madix’s attempt to exit the lawsuit based on her constitutionally protected right to free speech.
In his new ruling, obtained by Rolling Stone, the judge said Madix’s own admissions in the high-profile civil case support Leviss’ claims that Madix illegally accessed her ex-boyfriend Tom Sandoval’s phone, made copies of “intimate” FaceTime recordings featuring Leviss and sent snippets of the video to Leviss with a text reading, “you are DEAD TO ME.” He said Madix’s own admission that she locked herself in a bathroom stall to access the phone was “evidence of her lack of Sandoval’s consent” to obtain the video of Leviss in a state of undress and masturbating.
“Here, the gravamen of plaintiff’s causes of action against Madix arise from Madix’s alleged theft and distribution of private and sexually explicit recordings of plaintiff,” Los Angeles County Judge Daniel M. Crowley wrote in his ruling issued late Thursday. “The alleged conduct is illegal and, therefore, not protected by the First Amendment.”
Leviss’ lawyer Bryan Freedman called the ruling a resounding win for his client. “We are pleased at the court’s recognition that Ms. Madix’s actions were illegal. She does not have a free speech right to break into her boyfriend’s phone, steal sexually compromising videos of another woman, and disseminate them to menace and terrorize her. Her actions went well beyond protected speech, and her anger at Rachel provides no legal cover for lashing out in violation of multiple criminal laws,” he said, referring to his client by her legal first name. (Lawyers for Madix said they planned to have a statement on the ruling later in the day on Friday.)
Sandoval, the VPR co-star at the center of the saga, is a co-defendant in the lawsuit filed by Leviss last February. He previously filed his own challenge to the complaint, calling it too “vague” to proceed. The same judge ruled in Leviss’ favor on that motion, upholding the eavesdropping and invasion of privacy claims against Sandoval and giving Leviss another chance to file an amended complaint to salvage her claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Sandoval and his lawyers had argued Leviss voluntarily pointed her own camera at herself during consensual FaceTime calls, so there was no eavesdropping or invasion of privacy. At a hearing on the matter in May, the judge said it appeared Leviss considered the video call a contemporaneous sharing, not something that could be recorded and saved.
Leviss’ lawsuit against both Sandoval and Madix is now moving ahead with a trial date set for November 2025.
In her original 19-page complaint, Leviss claimed that Sandoval “surreptitiously recorded” her “in a state of undress and engaged in sex acts” as they embarked on a clandestine affair while Sandoval was still living with Madix amid a years-long domestic relationship. The lawsuit alleged that back in March 2023, Madix took the “sexually explicit videos” obtained from Sandoval’s phone and distributed or described them to other VPR cast members and people involved in the hit Bravo show.
As fans of the highly addictive reality TV production know, the FaceTime video is credited with exposing Sandoval and Leviss’ affair, leading to sky-high ratings for the show. According to Madix’s failed court filings seeking to exit the lawsuit, she found the video on Sandoval’s phone after his device slid out of his pocket while he was performing with his cover band at Tom Tom in West Hollywood, Calif. Madix wrote in a declaration that someone handed her the phone for safekeeping and that her “woman’s intuition” led her to check the device, which she easily accessed because she already knew the code. Madix says she was “shocked” to find a recording of at least one sexually explicit call while scanning the phone alone in the bathroom stall. “I hurriedly took out my own phone and made two recordings of the FaceTime video. Prior to that moment, I considered plaintiff a friend and did not know that she and Mr. Sandoval were having an affair,” Madix wrote.
In her lawsuit, Leviss said she found the story of how Madix obtained the video suspicious, but she was clear she believed Madix shared the videos with others. “Leviss has suffered grave emotional, psychological, financial and reputational harm as a result of Madix’s distribution, dissemination, and publicization of the illicit videos,” the lawsuit said. Leviss said she was “humiliated and villainized” by the alleged actions of Sandoval and Madix. She accused the pair of acting with “malice,” meaning they should be held liable for punitive damages “to deter such conduct in the future.”
“To be clear, Leviss has repeatedly acknowledged that her actions were morally objectionable and hurtful to Madix. She has offered numerous apologies. There is more to the story, however,” Leviss’ lawsuit said. “Lost in the mix was that Leviss was a victim of the predatory and dishonest behavior of an older man, who recorded sexually explicit videos of her without her knowledge or consent, which were then distributed, disseminated and discussed publicly by a scorned woman seeking vengeance, catalyzing the scandal.” Leviss said she ultimately checked herself into a mental health facility and remained there for three months while Bravo and the cast “milked the interest her excoriation had peaked.”
Leviss further claimed that she was in a “vulnerable state” while filming the show and that she was “encouraged” by producers to drink alcohol. Leviss said she started sleeping with Sandoval in August 2022 and believes Madix knew about it before she found the video on Sandoval’s phone. She alleges Vanderpump Rules was on the verge of being canceled around this time, as prior plots had “grown stale,” and that Sandoval and Madix “had every incentive” to “leverage” the affair into “the storyline that Vanderpump Rules so desperately needed.”
