More and more artists want Trump to stop using their music. They face a costly fight

When the White Stripes announced their lawsuit against Donald Trump this past week, they became the latest band to take legal action against the former president for the unauthorized use of their music.

"This machine sues fascists," Jack White, half of the disbanded duo, wrote in an Instagram caption, alongside a picture of a complaint filedin the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In the suit, Jack and Meg White allege that the Republican nominee for president broke federal copyright law by using their song "Seven Nation Army" in a fundraising pitch posted to social media.

The group joins a who's who of music legends who say Trump's policies are discordant with the music they create — from Beyoncé and Celine Dion to the Foo Fighters and Swedish pop legend ABBA.

"As far as I know, that may be a record," attorney Jacqueline Charlesworth said of the sheer volume of complaints against Trump's music selections.

The music suits are a different breed of litigation altogether from Trump's more high-profile legal headaches, including the federal cases over his handling of classified documents and his actions on Jan. 6, 2021. While those cases are testing the limits of presidential immunity, the lawsuits brought by the musicians have opened a window into the complex legal landscape that politicians and their campaigns must navigate when using music — particularly when it comes to the issue of copyrighted material.

How some campaigns try to get around copyrights

Charlesworth is an attorney at the firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, specializing in music licensing deals. She worked on an early music dispute, back in 2010, between the campaign of then-California state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, a Republican