CBS has moved to dismiss John Lowe’s lawsuit over alleged racial and sexual harassment tied to Matlock, putting the ex-writer’s June complaint on a faster legal track just as the studio says his claims are false. The filing asks the L.A. Superior Court to end the case before it moves deeper into discovery.
The dispute is now drawing attention because CBS says it hired Lowe in October 2023 and that he left in July 2024, while Lowe says he was mistreated during that stretch and should recover damages for what happened to him. In practical terms, a motion to dismiss asks a judge to throw out all or part of a case at the start if the court finds the claims cannot go forward as pleaded.
In his June filing, Lowe said showrunner Jennie Urman Snyder and producers allowed sexually explicit and discriminatory conduct to fester on the production. He alleged that Snyder referred to Juneteenth with a racial slur and that another producer made a sexually suggestive late-night call to him. The complaint was filed in L.A. Superior Court and centers on conduct Lowe says created a hostile work environment while he was writing on the CBS-produced series.
CBS responded by taking direct aim at both the allegations and the legal theory behind them. Its lawyers said the claim that Lowe was unlawfully terminated as a writer on Matlock implicates California’s anti-SLAPP statute, which is designed to stop lawsuits aimed at chilling protected speech. They also said the decision not to reengage Lowe as a writer was a creative choice tied to free expression on a matter of public interest, not an unlawful firing.
The studio’s case is blunt. Its legal team said Snyder never used the slur Lowe described and that no one else witnessed it. It also said Lowe was never subjected to race or sex harassment, calling the claims fabrications and outright lies. A CBS Studios spokesperson said the accusations were “demonstrably inaccurate and maliciously fabricated” after a thorough investigation, and said the company stands firmly behind its producers.
That leaves the case at a familiar but consequential fork. Lowe has accused a CBS production of allowing offensive conduct to continue. CBS says the complaint is a retaliatory attack from a writer who was not renewed because of performance problems and whose allegations cannot survive in court. The next move belongs to the judge in L.A. Superior Court, and the decision on the dismissal motion will determine whether the dispute stays alive as a workplace case or gets cut down at the outset.
