‘Involuntary Servitude’: Fuerza Regida Blasts Label Rancho Humilde in Latest Court Filing
The regional Mexican stars are pulling no punches as a legal battle with their label drags on, accusing it of trying to illegally keep them under a record deal.
Black News 
The bitter legal battle between Fuerza Regida and its label Rancho Humilde is heating up, with the band now accusing the company of holding them in “unlawful captivity.”
In a new court filing Thursday (May 14), attorneys for the fast-rising regional Mexican group are urging a judge to let them continue accusing Rancho of violating California’s so-called seven-year rule, which prohibits exclusive services deals like record contracts that run any longer than that.
Related
Fuerza says Rancho is holding them in “unlawful personal services captivity” and is “weaponizing” that illegal control to block the group from playing at major events, including this spring’s MLB World Baseball Classic and the upcoming FIFA World Cup.
“The weapon Rancho has been using to block [Fuerza]’s appearances at seminal events … has destroyed irreplaceable opportunities one by one while this litigation proceeds,” the group’s attorney, Kenneth D. Freundlich, writes in the filing, obtained and first reported by Billboard.
Rancho Humilde, a popular indie label founded by Jimmy Humilde known for fueling the recent boom in corridos tumbados, has been sparring in court for months with Fuerza, one of its top acts. The band’s 111XPANTIA debuted last spring at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, the highest ever for a Spanish-language album by a duo or group.
In a September lawsuit, the label accused the band of breaching its record deal by unilaterally doing features for other artists and inking live performance contracts with Apple Music and Live Nation. It claimed the group would owe more than $15 million in damages when the case was over.
Fuerza Regida then countersued a month later, alleging the indie label had withheld millions of dollars in royalties and tried to “sabotage” its success — including by leaving it off Latin Grammy Awards submissions. It has since argued that the alleged retaliation has continued with blocked opportunities for the World Cup and the soundtrack for the popular Grand Theft Auto video games.
Last month, Rancho asked the judge to dismiss much of Fuerza’s case, including its accusations over the seven-year rule (formally California Labor Code Section 2855). Though the band first signed its record deal in 2018, the label argued Fuerza had willingly signed new deals in 2021 and 2022 that had clearly restarted the clock.
“California courts do not mechanically aggregate successive contracts for purposes of Labor Code Section 2855 and California law does not treat successive written contracts … as a ‘single unified transaction’ simply because their terms, added together, exceed seven years,” the label’s lawyers wrote in their April motion.
Rancho argued that the later deals gave Fuerza both a $1.8 million settlement payment and a $300,000 signing bonus, making each one a “discrete, superseding contract” that had reset the seven-year limit.
But in Thursday’s response, Fuerza’s attorneys say Section 2855 is “rooted in California’s constitutional prohibition on involuntary servitude” and cannot be evaded merely by foisting additional contracts on artists that are “stacked infinitely.” And they say the band didn’t really want to sign those new contracts anyway.
“[The band] signed them because it had no choice,” the band’s attorneys write. “The old contract was in force. FRC could not negotiate with anyone else. FRC could not test its market value. FRC was not free.”
The case remains in its earliest stages, as both sides try to dismiss the other’s accusations at the outset. If the judge allows either side’s case to move ahead, the parties will proceed into discovery and toward an eventual trial. Neither side returned requests for comment on Friday (May 15).
