Sex Trafficking Lawsuit Against Vince McMahon & WWE Moving Out of Public Eye

The sex trafficking lawsuit filed by former WWE employee Janal Grant against Vince McMahon and the company is officially heading to private arbitration.

A joint motion for the move was filed by all parties involved on Thursday in U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, and was approved Friday morning by Judge Sarah F. Russell.

According to Brandon Thurston of POST Wrestling, both Vince McMahon and WWE had been pushing for private arbitration for some time, citing an arbitration clause in a 2022 nondisclosure agreement that was signed by Grant.

It's not clear at this time why Grant has now agreed to move the case out of the public eye. The filing simply states that "active discussions regarding a potential agreement" are taking place. An attorney for Grant did not respond to POST Wrestling's request for comment.

Full text of the joint motion filed on Thursday reads as follows:

"PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that the parties respectfully submit this joint motion for a short adjournment of the upcoming hearing on Defendants’ Motions to Compel Arbitration and Plaintiff’s Renewed Motion for Leave to Serve Motion-Related Discovery, which is currently scheduled for June 16, 2026. The parties are in active discussions regarding a potential agreement to arbitrate the dispute in confidential arbitration that would moot those motions. They seek this relief in good faith, to avoid unnecessarily consuming the Court’s and the parties’ resources—and so they can focus on progressing the potential arbitration agreement. The Parties respectfully propose that the Court temporarily adjourn the hearing and allow them to file a Joint Status Report within 21 days."

Friday's order by Judge Russell states that a joint status report must be filed by Friday, July 10. If an agreement is not reached by that date, all parties are required to have a hearing before the court sometime in August.

There's been movement in multiple high profile lawsuits involving WWE this week

This all comes on the heels of a settlement in principle being reached in the WWE shareholders lawsuit earlier this week.

That civil case alleged that Vince McMahon guided the sale of WWE to Endeavor Group Holdings back in 2023. McMahon, WWE President Nick Khan, Chief Content Officer Paul 'Triple H' Levesque, and TKO (new WWE parent company formed after the sale) executives Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro were all set to testify at that trial, which was previously scheduled to begin on Monday.

Janal Grant filed her lawsuit in January 2024. It included rather graphic allegations of sex abuse and trafficking against Vince McMahon. Former WWE executive John Laurinaitis was initially listed as a defendant, but he was later dropped after agreeing to provide evidence in the case.

The lawsuit led to Vince McMahon resigning from his position as WWE executive chairman and from the TKO board of directors. WWE as a company was named in the suit, accused of negligently allowing the abuse against Janal Grant to take place.

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