J.K. Rowling Is Now Facing Legal Trouble for Her Transphobic Comments

Controversial author J.K. Rowling has made plenty of headlines not for her work, but for her continued transphobic comments. For years, the influential author of the Harry Potter series has tweeted to her 14 million X followers a slew of opinions about transgender identities and gender expression. But her feed has been suspiciously silent lately -- and it may be because she's about to be in a host of legal trouble.

During the 2024 Paris Olympics, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif faced a flurry of allegations about her gender identity, with many false claims that she was transgender gaining traction on the internet. Despite being born a woman and not identifying as transgender or intersex, she continued to face attacks online about her gender presentation, with some questioning her qualifications for the Olympic women's boxing team.

Despite the hatred directed at her online and the flurry of accusations, Imane still took home the gold medal -- but she's still searching for justice over the abuse she faced. Following the conclusion of the Olympics, she filed a cyberbullying lawsuit with the French authorities, naming J.K. specifically as one of the persons conducting the "acts of aggravated cyber harassment."

“On Aug. 13, (The National Center for the Fight Against Online Hatred) contacted the OCLCH (Central Office for the Fight Against Crimes Against Humanity and Hate Crimes) to conduct an investigation into the counts of cyber harassment due to gender, public insult because of gender, public incitement to discrimination and public insult because of origin," the Paris Prosecutor's Office confirmed to Variety.

Others included in the investigation are Elon Musk and Donald Trump, as both tweeted about Imane during her tenure at the Olympics.

J.K., specifically, tweeted out to her followers that Imane was “a male who knows he’s protected by a misogynist sporting establishment enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head, and whose life’s ambition he’s just shattered" following her match with Italian boxer Angela Carini, per Them.

It seems that J.K. has since decided to delete some of these potentially libelous posts, as the aforementioned tweet is no longer available on her X account. She's also not posted since Aug. 7, and many other users on X have noted that she's moved to delete a variety of other posts she made during the Olympics. Currently, the only posts on her account that mention Imane are posts sharing various articles that claim the boxer is actually a male.

Though J.K. is easily one of the highest-earning authors in history, she is not currently a billionaire. In 2004, well into the Harry Potter craze, she was named the "first billion-dollar author" by Forbes, though she denied that she was a billionaire just a year later. By 2012, it was confirmed that she did not surpass the billion-dollar mark due to a combination of taxes in the U.K. as well as her various charitable donations.