Caitlyn Jenner escapes memecoin lawsuit as judge says token not a security

A federal judge has tossed a class lawsuit over Caitlyn Jenner’s memecoin, saying it did not plausibly allege that the token was an unregistered security.

US media personality and former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner has escaped a class-action lawsuit after a federal judge ruled her memecoin was not a security under US law.

California federal judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. wrote in an order on Thursday that the lawsuit failed to plausibly plead that Caitlyn Jenner (JENNER) tokens were investment contracts, as they didn’t pool investor money or use funds to develop “any related product or technology.”

“Defendants stated that ‘[t]he $JENNER token is a memecoin on the Ethereum blockchain intended solely for entertainment purposes,’ and that its value would increase because Jenner would use her fame and influence to promote it, increasing demand,” the order said.

“Promotion alone, however, does not establish a common enterprise absent pooling or a structure linking investor fortunes,” it added.

A group of JENNER memecoin buyers first sued Jenner and her late manager, Sophia Hutchins, in November 2024, claiming they lost thousands of dollars as the token’s price collapsed and that JENNER was an unregistered securities offering.

Blumenfeld tossed the suit in May 2025 for failure to state a claim, and the group filed an amended complaint later that same month, led by Lee Greenfield, a UK citizen who claimed he lost more than $40,000 investing in JENNER.

The amended complaint had argued that investors had pooled their assets as Jenner promised that once the token reached a market value of $50 million, a 3% transaction fee would fund token buybacks, marketing, donations to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and a token for ownership in Jenner’s Olympic gold medal.

Blumenfeld wrote that the amended complaint heavily focused on planned donations to Trump, but didn’t explain how investors believed that doing so would provide a financial return to them.

“Nor is it clear that the alleged plan to distribute fractionalized ownership interests in Jenner’s gold medal has any bearing on Greenfield’s claim, since the plan was not announced until August 2024—after the last of his purchases—and was never executed,” he added.

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Blumenfeld denied allowing the class group another chance to amend the lawsuit and added that claims regarding contracts and common law fraud under California law were best sent to state court.

JENNER was first launched on the Solana blockchain via the memecoin creator Pump.fun in May 2024. It was soon embroiled in controversy after Jenner and other memecoin launching celebrities claimed they were scammed by Sahil Arora, a claimed collaborator on the tokens.

Jenner relaunched the token on Ethereum, which investors claimed diminished the value of the original Solana token. The token has since essentially lost all of its value after hitting a peak value of nearly $7.5 million in June 2024.

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Source: CoinTelegraph