Ed Henry’s Fox News Firing: Lawsuit, Settlement, and Appeal

The lawsuit against former Fox News anchor Ed Henry was filed in July 2020 by Jennifer Eckhart, a former Fox Business producer who accused him of rape and sex trafficking, and it ended in a confidential settlement on June 15, 2025, one day before trial was set to begin in Manhattan federal court. A companion Ed Henry Fox News lawsuit brought by frequent guest Cathy Areu was dismissed early, and Fox News itself was later dismissed as a defendant and cleared on appeal.¹

The Firing That Preceded the Suit

On June 25, 2020, Fox News received a complaint from an attorney representing a former employee alleging “willful sexual misconduct in the workplace years ago.” The network suspended Henry the same day, pulled him off the air, and hired an outside law firm to investigate. Six days later, on July 1, 2020, Fox News fired him.²

Henry had co-anchored America’s Newsroom since January 2020. Through his attorney Catherine Foti, he denied the allegations and said he was “confident that he will be vindicated after a full hearing in an appropriate forum.” Publisher William Morrow canceled his forthcoming memoir the same week.²³

What Jennifer Eckhart Alleged

Less than three weeks after the firing, on July 20, 2020, attorneys Douglas Wigdor and Michael Willemin filed a civil complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (case number 20-CV-5593) naming Henry, Fox News, and several Fox News hosts as defendants.⁴

Eckhart alleged that Henry sexually harassed her for years, promising to advance her career in exchange for sex. Her complaint described two specific assaults: that Henry forced her to perform oral sex at Fox News headquarters in New York, and that two years later he handcuffed her during what her lawyers called “a violent, painful rape” in a Manhattan hotel room the network frequently used to lodge visiting employees.⁵

The complaint further alleged that Henry asked Eckhart to be his “sex slave,” threatened retaliation if she did not comply, and took non-consensual photographs he later used as an “intimidation tactic.” Her legal claims included violations of federal sex-trafficking statutes, New York state and city human rights laws, and a New York City administrative code provision covering gender-motivated violence.⁴

Henry’s Response and Defamation Countersuit

Henry maintained that his relationship with Eckhart was consensual and said he had provided the network with texts, emails, and photographs to support that claim. On June 30, 2021, he filed his own lawsuit against Fox News and CEO Suzanne Scott in federal court in New Jersey, alleging defamation and invasion of privacy. He accused the network of painting him as a “sex criminal” and using him as a “scapegoat” to protect Scott’s career, and alleged that Scott had covered up an affair between a subordinate and Fox News President Jay Wallace.⁶

Fox News called the countersuit “a desperate attempt for relevance and redemption” that was “rife with inaccuracies,” and said Wallace had been cleared by an independent investigation.⁷

How the Case Moved Through Court

September 2021 Rulings on Motions to Dismiss

On September 9, 2021, Judge Ronnie Abrams issued rulings on the defendants’ motions to dismiss. Most of Eckhart’s claims against Henry survived, including sex trafficking, gender-motivated violence, and city-law harassment. Her federal and state discrimination claims against Henry were dismissed. Against Fox News, hostile-work-environment and retaliation claims were allowed to proceed; the sex-trafficking and photograph-related claims against the network were dismissed.⁸

In the same ruling, the judge found that Henry’s lawyers had posted nude photographs of Eckhart on the public court docket. She called it not a “reasonable litigation tactic” but an attempt to “victim shame,” and allowed retaliation and “revenge porn” claims tied to those photographs to move forward at that stage.⁸

March 2025: Fox News Dismissed

On March 12, 2025, Judge Abrams dismissed Fox News as a defendant. She found that the network did not have “actual notice” of Henry’s alleged misconduct toward Eckhart until her lawyers reported it on June 25, 2020, three years after their last alleged sexual encounter, and that Fox News investigated and fired him within six days of learning of the complaint.⁹

The judge rejected Eckhart’s argument that the network should have known about Henry’s behavior based on his history with other women, finding that evidence of those other incidents did not reach the network until April 2017 or later. “No reasonable jury could find that they put it on notice that Henry would assault her,” she wrote.¹⁰

The bulk of Eckhart’s claims against Henry survived. Whether her sexually explicit text messages to him indicated consent or were “flirtatious” but did not constitute consent to what the complaint described as violent sexual encounters was a credibility question “squarely within the province of the jury,” Judge Abrams ruled. She dismissed the “revenge porn” claim against Henry at that stage. Trial was set for May 12, 2025.⁹

The June 2025 Settlement

On June 15, 2025, one day before trial was scheduled to begin in Manhattan federal court, Eckhart and Henry settled. The financial terms were not disclosed. Henry’s attorney Gary Rosen said the matter was “resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties.” Eckhart called the five-year legal battle “exhaustive” and “retraumatizing” and said she had “turned pain into purpose.”¹¹¹

The 2026 Second Circuit Appeal

With the claims against Henry resolved, Eckhart pursued her appeal of the dismissal of Fox News. On April 24, 2026, a three-judge Second Circuit panel of Myrna Perez, Beth Robinson, and Susan Carney upheld the lower court in a 13-page opinion. The panel found that Eckhart had not shown Fox News knew of Henry’s conduct toward her and failed to take corrective action, and that rumors and later accounts from other women were insufficient to establish the required notice. It also held that Eckhart had forfeited a broader strict-liability theory under the New York City Human Rights Law by raising it too late.¹²

The appeals court’s opinion described what Fox News had done after Henry’s 2016 tabloid scandal: the network directed him to a sexual rehabilitation clinic and treatment program, suspended him from the air for several months, reduced his annual pay, and removed him from his position as chief White House correspondent.¹²

The Cathy Areu Claims

The original complaint also named a second plaintiff, Cathy Areu, a frequent Fox News guest contributor. She accused Henry of sending unsolicited pornographic images and conditioning career help on sexual acts, and she brought claims against Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Howard Kurtz, and political analyst Gianno Caldwell. Fox News said an outside investigation had found her claims “false, patently frivolous and utterly devoid of any merit” and argued she was “neither an employee nor a contributor.”¹³⁴

In the September 2021 ruling, Judge Abrams dismissed all of Areu’s claims against Fox News, Hannity, Carlson, Kurtz, and Henry, finding she failed to establish an employer-employee relationship with the network and did not provide sufficient facts that her rejections of sexual advances were clearly communicated or resulted in professional harm. She was given leave to amend.¹⁴

1
People. Suit Settled Ed Henry Former Fox News Employee Who Accused Him of Rape
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CNN. Fox News Fires Anchor Ed Henry After Sexual Misconduct Allegation
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Fox News Press. Fox News Channel Names Ed Henry Co-Anchor of Americas Newsroom
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CNBC. Lawsuit Accuses Former Fox News Reporter Ed Henry of Rape
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NPR. Fox News Lawsuit Sexual Assault Ed Henry Jennifer Eckhart
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NBC News. Former Fox News Host Ed Henry Sues Network CEO Defamation
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CNN. Ed Henry Fox News Lawsuit
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vLex. Eckhart v Fox News Network LLC
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Deadline. Fox News Ed Henry Lawsuit Dismissed
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The Hollywood Reporter. Fox News Wins Dismissal Lawsuit Producer Over Ed Henry Rape
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Courthouse News Service. Ed Henry Accuser Settles Sex Trafficking Suit Before Trial
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Courthouse News Service. Second Circuit Sides With Fox News in Ex-Producer Jennifer Eckharts Sex Harassment Case
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Wigdor LLP. Sexual Harassment Fox News Ed Henry Sean Hannity Tucker Carlson Howard Kurtz
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Courthouse News Service. Judge Tosses Fox News Sex Harassment Claims From Ex-Contributor