A judge in Maryland ruled this week that a lawsuit alleging Education Secretary Linda McMahon and her husband, Vince McMahon, knew about and failed to prevent the sexual abuse of underage boys by a World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) announcer could proceed.

As Axios reports, the McMahons — who co-founded the sports entertainment company that would become WWE in 1980 — are both named as defendants in a lawsuit filed last year on behalf of five former WWE “ring boys.” The plaintiffs, who have since been joined by three additional alleged victims, claim that they were sexually abused by former WWE announcer Melvin Phillips as teenagers after being recruited by him to serve as ringside assistants, or “ring boys,” at WWE events in the 1980s and ’90s.

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The suit further alleges that Phillips’ abuse was widely known within the company, including by the McMahons, who allegedly “knowingly allowed Phillips to exploit his position at the WWE to groom and abuse Ring Boys.” It cites a sworn deposition in which New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick claimed that Vince McMahon told him that he and Linda knew that Phillips, who died in 2012, had a “peculiar and unnatural interest and attachment to children” as early as the 1980s. It alleges that the McMahons fired Phillips in 1988 following allegations of abuse, only to rehire him six weeks later.

The suit also quotes multiple former WWE wrestlers and employees who have spoken over the years about Phillips’ alleged abuse of young boys, including a former high-level WWE executive who said that the McMahons “clearly knew what was going on, but really did nothing to stop it.”

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In June, the McMahons, who are reportedly separated, filed motions to dismiss the case. According to Axios, on Wednesday, December 10, District Court Judge James Bredar granted both the McMahons’ motions in regard to one plaintiff and Linda’s in regard to five others. The remaining cases will proceed however, because, as Bredar wrote in his ruling, “the Plaintiffs have plausibly pled that the adults around them including Vincent and Linda McMahon—had relevant knowledge at relevant times, and that they could and should have taken action to prevent the abuse and the harm that ensued.”

Linda McMahon’s lawyer, Laura Brevetti, described the lawsuit to the Washington Post last year as “baseless.”

As Axios noted last year, the Education Secretary is just one of several figures in Donald Trump’s second administration who have been connected to allegations of sexual misconduct. Trump himself was found liable in 2022 for sexual abuse and defamation in a case brought by journalist E. Jean Carroll, who accused the president of raping her in the 1990s.  

As Secretary of Education, McMahon, who had no experience in education prior to her appointment outside of a year spent on the Connecticut State Board of Education in the 2000s, has made enforcing the Trump administration’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies a priority. She has threatened legal action over including trans children in school sports, suggested trans-friendly bathroom policies violate Title IX, and investigated California’s law against forced outing of trans students.

In August, the Department of Education and the Department of Justice launched the “Title IX Special Investigations Team,” aimed in part at going after schools that allow trans women and girls to participate in women’s and girls’ sports programs.

“To all the entities that continue to allow men to compete in women’s sports, there’s a new sheriff in town,” McMahon has said of the administration’s efforts to roll back trans inclusion on school sports.

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