EXCLUSIVE: California Says Tory Lanez $100M Stabbing Lawsuit Is Bogus & Can’t Be Filed Under Federal Law

Tory Lanez’s prison stabbing lawsuit met an unexpected legal barrier after CDCR claimed Eleventh Amendment immunity.

Tory Lanez better be ready, because The California prison system is fighting back against his $100 million stabbing lawsuit.

California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation filed a motion to dismiss his federal complaint on July 29 arguing federal courts have no power over a state agency.

That lawsuit grew out of a violent attack on Tory Lanez that took place on May 12, 2025 inside a Tehachapi prison.

As AllHipHop’s original reporting on the stabbing detailed, a fellow prisoner named Santino Casio approached Peterson with a shank he’d fashioned inside California Correctional Institution.

Tory Lanez absorbed 16 stab wounds from that assault spread across his torso, back, head and face. He suffered two collapsed lungs, was airlifted to a hospital in Bakersfield and spent time on a ventilator before stabilizing.

Speaking from behind bars in his first broadcast interview with NBC News, Lanez said the experience has taken a serious mental toll.

“Truthfully, I’ve done my best to keep my head above water, but mentally, I’ve gone through trauma that I sometimes even struggle with,” he said.

Casio had been incarcerated since 2004 on life-term convictions for second-degree murder and first-degree attempted murder against a pregnant teenage victim.

He’d also accumulated an assault charge inside prison in 2008 and a weapons manufacturing conviction in 2018.

Tory Lanez’s attorneys argue that management deliberately placed them together despite knowing Casio’s full history and Peterson’s elevated risk as a celebrity inmate.

The lawsuit also faults guards for responding too slowly and skipping available tools like smoke bombs or flash grenades.

Lanez’s legal team set damages at roughly $1 million per wound plus $10 million for permanent facial scarring.

The filing adds that prison staff took Peterson’s handwritten songbooks full of unreleased material after the attack and never gave them back.

Court documents obtained by AllHipHop show CDCR pressing two separate legal theories to exit the case permanently and without amendment.

CDCR contends that states aren’t and can’t be held liable under that federal civil rights law.

The state also argues Eleventh Amendment immunity shields the agency from every claim Tory Lanez brought regardless of whether it arises under state or federal law.

Tory Lanez entered prison after a Los Angeles jury convicted him of shooting Megan Thee Stallion in the feet in July 2020.

Tory Lanez was found guilty in December 2022 on three felonies including assault with a semiautomatic firearm and sentenced to 10 years the following August.

Both the California Court of Appeal and the state Supreme Court have rejected his efforts to overturn those convictions.

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