A Los Angeles judge has pushed most of the bombshell lawsuit accusing former Google CEO Eric Schmidt of sexual assault, spying, and business theft out of public view and into private arbitration, giving Schmidt an early procedural win while keeping the ugliest allegations off the public docket for now.
Instead of unfolding in open court, key claims, including accusations of rape and alleged unauthorized access to Google accounts, will now be fought in a confidential forum where filings and testimony are typically shielded from public scrutiny.
Superior Court Judge Michael Small ruled that a federal law aimed at limiting forced arbitration in sexual assault and harassment disputes does not apply to plaintiff Michelle Ritter’s case. He found that Ritter and Schmidt signed a settlement and arbitration agreement in December 2024, after the alleged misconduct, and that this agreement controls how most of the dispute will proceed. Judge Small granted Schmidt’s motion to compel arbitration and put the civil case on hold, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Ritter’s amended complaint reads like a Hollywood legal thriller. She alleges Schmidt “forcibly raped” her on a yacht off the coast of Mexico in 2021, had sex with her without consent at the 2023 Burning Man festival, and deployed a team of engineers to fashion a “backdoor” into Google servers so he could spy on her and others. Her suit names Google as a defendant and seeks roughly $100 million in damages, as reported by MyNewsLA.
Schmidt has denied all wrongdoing. His legal team hailed the ruling as a straightforward application of the parties’ arbitration deal. Ritter called the decision “problematic,” arguing that the alleged digital surveillance was a continuation of the earlier sexual misconduct and should be covered by the federal protections. Judge Small wrote that because the settlement and arbitration clause came after the sexual assault disputes had already arisen, the 2022 Ending Forced Arbitration law could not be invoked to keep the case in open court, according to the Los Angeles Times.
What the law says
The Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021, which took effect on March 3, 2022, amended the Federal Arbitration Act to let survivors choose court over arbitration for qualifying claims. The whole fight in cases like this often comes down to timing and wording: is the arbitration clause a “predispute” agreement that the statute wipes out, or a later, voluntary deal that survives the law? The statute’s text and effective date are central to that analysis, as laid out on Congress.gov.
What happens next
With arbitration compelled, Judge Small has stayed the Los Angeles court proceedings while Ritter’s claims move into the private forum. A post-arbitration status conference is tentatively set for March 2, 2027, giving a sense of how long this could play out behind closed doors, according to MyNewsLA.
Ritter has recently been representing herself in court, without an attorney, and several key filings in the case remain sealed. That combination all but guarantees that the public will get only limited windows into what is shaping up to be a high-stakes, heavily litigated dispute.
Why it matters
Beyond the rare and serious sexual assault allegations leveled at a prominent tech figure, the case highlights how claims of digital surveillance and alleged misuse of corporate systems can effectively disappear from public view once they are sent to arbitration. Proceedings are usually confidential, discovery is narrower, and broader questions about corporate behavior often never see a jury.
Supporters of the 2022 federal law pushed for it as a way to drag these kinds of cases into the sunlight of the public court system. Legal analysts, including commentators at large law firms such as DLA Piper, have warned that arbitration can limit transparency and make it harder to scrutinize patterns of misconduct. This Los Angeles fight over where the case belongs is a reminder that even laws meant to curb secret proceedings still turn on fine print and timing.
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