Neil Young has gone back to court over “Rockin’ in the Free World.” On Monday, October 26, the 80-year-old filed a copyright lawsuit in federal court in Richmond, Virginia, against the Trump 47 Committee, a political action committee tied to President Donald Trump. He says the committee played the song without a license before Trump walked on stage at an October 12 rally in Youngstown, Ohio, and he is asking for $10 million in damages.
It is the second time Young has sued Trump’s political operation over the same song. According to the new complaint, the first suit ended with a promise that it would not happen again.
What the new lawsuit says
Courthouse News Service reports that the complaint runs to five pages and was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, on the grounds that the PAC has an office in Richmond. Reuters lists the case as Young v. Trump 47 Committee Inc, No. 3:26-cv-01398. U.S. District Judge Robert Payne, an appointee of George H.W. Bush, has been assigned to it.
The core claim is simple. Young says the committee had no license and no permission to play the song in Youngstown. He also says it was not a one-off. Courthouse News quotes the complaint as saying the committee “has caused the song to be played numerous times at other rallies” meant to drive Republican turnout in the upcoming midterm elections.
Young is asking the court for two things: $10 million in damages, and an order barring the committee from playing any of his songs.
The filing also takes on Trump directly. It describes “Rockin’ in the Free World” as an anthem that sets “the hollow promises of American political rhetoric” against what it calls the harsh realities faced by “the poor, homeless and forgotten.” Both outlets quote its sharpest line: the song, the complaint says, is “the opposite of everything Donald J. Trump stands for.”
As of Monday evening, neither side had commented. Courthouse News says the PAC did not respond to a request for comment, and neither did Young’s attorneys, Robert Besser and Scott Simmons. Reuters says White House spokespeople did not immediately respond either.
The 2020 fight, and a promise that is now in dispute
This dispute goes back years. Courthouse News notes that Young has objected to Trump using his music since Trump’s 2015 campaign events. The first lawsuit came in August 2020, after the Trump campaign played “Rockin’ in the Free World” and “Devil’s Sidewalk” at its June rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. TheWrap reported at the time that the complaint, filed in New York, said Young could not let his music become the “theme song” for what he called “a divisive, un-American campaign of ignorance and hate.”
That case ended quietly. In December 2020, ABC News in Australia reported that a Manhattan federal court had dismissed it with prejudice, so it could not be brought again. At the time, it was not clear whether the two sides had settled, and neither commented.
The new filing fills in that gap, at least from Young’s side. According to Reuters, the complaint says the campaign settled the case and promised never to use “Rockin’ in the Free World” again without a license. That alleged promise is now the backbone of the case. Whether a 2020 agreement with the Trump re-election campaign binds a separate 2026 PAC is likely to be one of the first things the committee’s lawyers contest. So far no lawyer for the committee has been named; Reuters lists its attorney information as “not yet available.”
Why this song
Few songs in rock history have had as strange a political life as this one. Courthouse News recounts the origin story told by Crazy Horse guitarist Frank “Poncho” Sampedro: on tour in 1989, the band learned that a planned trip to the Soviet Union had fallen through. Sampedro remarked that they would just have to keep on rockin’ in the free world, and Young wrote the song and played it live in Seattle the next day. Young performed it that year on Saturday Night Live, and its verses took aim at the George H.W. Bush administration.
Its chorus sounds like a celebration of freedom, and that is why politicians keep reaching for it. Its verses describe addiction, homelessness, and a mother abandoning her baby, and that is why Young keeps objecting. The complaint makes the same point: the chorus is meant as “savage irony.”
The complaint also cites the song’s continued popularity, saying it has been performed in recent weeks by Roger Daltrey, Lucinda Williams, Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl, Dave Matthews, and Billy Strings.
Young’s politics are not new. He co-founded Farm Aid, wrote “Ohio” for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young after the Kent State shootings, and made the 2006 album Living with War to protest the Iraq War. More recently he pulled his music from Spotify over Joe Rogan’s podcast. Courthouse News also notes that Young, born in Canada, became a U.S. citizen in 2020.
Not the only artist fighting this battle
Young is far from alone. According to Courthouse News, Rihanna, Linkin Park, Steven Tyler, the White Stripes, and the estates of Tom Petty and Sinéad O’Connor have all objected to Trump using their music.
What happens next
The committee has to be served and respond to the complaint before the case moves forward. The more pressing question is whether Young will seek a fast order stopping the song from being played at rallies before the midterms, now days away.
For now, the most famous protest song of the late 1980s is back in a courtroom. Its author is suing over the same song, with the same opponent, for the second time.
