Kim Kardashian and Kris Jenner just hit a legal wall in their latest settlement with Ray J. A judge has denied the pair’s attempt to keep parts of the 2023 adult tape settlement agreement under wraps, cutting straight through their argument that making the deal public would damage their privacy and weaken settlement protections.
That means some of the behind-the-scenes details tied to one of pop culture’s longest-running and most talked-about sagas may stay in the spotlight. For a family that has built an empire on managing the narrative, this is not a small setback.
Judge Was Not Buying The Kardashians’ Privacy Argument
According to the court filing, Kim and Kris asked the court to seal portions of the 2023 settlement agreement with Ray J. They argued that public disclosure “would cause substantial harm to the Kardashians’ privacy interests and undermine the strong public policy interest in favor of settlement agreement.”
But Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Steven A. Ellis was not convinced.
In his ruling, the judge said that Kim and Kris failed to offer actual evidence that releasing the terms would hurt them. He wrote that their claims were “too vague, speculative, amorphous, and unsupported to support the requested sealing order.”
Ellis denied the motions to seal almost entirely, with one limited exception. A bank account number can be partially redacted. Beyond that, the request was shut down.
Representatives for Kardashian, Jenner, and Ray J did not immediately comment.
Old Scandal, New Court Fight
Ray J, whose legal name is William Ray Norwood Jr., dated Kim Kardashian in the early 2000s. The two appeared together in the now-infamous adult tape recorded in 2003 and released in 2007 by Vivid Entertainment. The release came just before ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ premiered on E! in October 2007, helping set off a media storm that never fully died down.
Now, nearly two decades later, that chapter is back in court.
In October 2025, Kardashian and Jenner sued Norwood for defamation. They accused him of making “fabricated” claims that they should face a federal racketeering investigation. And they added that he was trying to harass them while “reviving his own fading notoriety.” This added fuel to fire as the following month, Norwood reportedly filed a countersuit. This countersuit accused Kim and Kris of breaching a $6 million settlement tied to the tape by discussing it again on their Hulu reality series ‘The Kardashians’.
So where does this go next? We will have to wait and see.
