A recent ruling by the U.S. federal district court in California regarding a class-action lawsuit filed by investors against socialite Jenna(e)r (Caitlyn Jenner) from the Kardashian family ordered a judgment. The judge ruled that the meme coin named $JENNER does not meet the legal definition of a security and dismissed the investors’ proposed class action.
The plaintiffs alleged that Jenner used her status as a socialite to promote the token and suffered losses of $40,000.
The dispute in this case is whether the $JENNER token constitutes an unregistered security. Plaintiff Lee Greenfield accused Jenner of promoting the token using her celebrity status, causing him to lose more than $40,000. However, the U.S. district judge overseeing the case, Stanley Blumenfeld, Jr., cited the 1946 U.S. Supreme Court precedent Howey Test to conduct the review. The judge noted that although the plaintiffs did in fact put money into buying the tokens, legally, there was no Common Enterprise—an investment contract that issues a security—within that investment. The opinion explained that the plaintiffs failed to prove that there was an agreement among investors to share profits and losses, and also failed to prove that the funds were pooled and used for specific investment projects other than the token itself.
During the course of the ruling, the judge conducted an in-depth analysis of the elements of an investment contract. Under the standards of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), an investment contract must include the investment of money in a common enterprise, and investors must reasonably expect to profit from the efforts of others. The judge said that because the plaintiffs could not reasonably explain that the token had either “Horizontal Commonality” or “Vertical Commonality,” it lacked the characteristics of a common enterprise. In the absence of fully satisfied legal requirements, the court found that it was not necessary to further determine whether investors expected to profit solely from Jenner’s efforts, and directly ruled that the token is not a security.
The lawsuit also mentioned that Jenner previously posted AI-generated promotional imagery on the social platform X, with slogans implying “make everyone rich,” among others. The plaintiffs argued that these promotional activities induced them to buy the meme coin on the Solana SOL and Ethereum ETH chains. The defendants, however, argued that the $JENNER token in the Ethereum version is not a security, and that Jenner’s broker, Sophia Hutchins, was not a statutory seller. Notably, Hutchins died in July 2025, and the judge ultimately adopted the defendants’ position, finding that the existing evidence was insufficient to support classifying the cryptocurrency as an investment contract regulated by securities laws.
Federal court dismisses, and the district court can file again
Although the federal judge dismissed the allegations of violating securities laws, the ruling left room for the plaintiffs to seek relief at the local level. Judge Blumenfeld said that, in addition to claims related to federal securities laws, other lawsuit claims involving civil torts or damages would be handled and resolved by state courts. This means that even though Jenner won the securities-classification dispute at the federal level, if investors shift to state district courts to bring other types of legal actions, this case could still lead to subsequent legal proceedings.
This article, “Judge Rules That JENNER Meme Coin Issued by Kardashian Family Socialite Caitlyn Jenner Is Not a Security, Dismissing the Claims,” first appeared on Chain News ABMedia.
