Author: Bill Cafaro
The First Amendment guarantees us the right to free speech, but unfortunately, it is generally legal to force employees (or anyone else) to sign this away. Businesses do this by making people sign confidentiality clauses to get hired, to keep their jobs, or to get their settlement after any employment dispute or lawsuit. Confidentiality agreements prevent the Employee from talking about anything the Company doesn’t want discussed, and always include the amount of the settlement. Read More
What’s So Bad About These Agreements? Shouldn’t Business Owners Have a Right to Some Privacy?
Businesses legitimately need non-disclosure agreements to protect their trade secrets and other vital information from their competition. Unfortunately, they can also be used to conceal systemic violations of laws and regulations, patterns of discriminatory conduct, or sexual harassment. In those situations, offensive and illegal behavior can continue and flourish. For example, Fox News used these clauses as a curtain to keep a culture of sexual harassment out of public view for over a decade, allowing Roger Ailes to rack up $45 Million in payouts for sexual harassment claims, and Bill O’Reilly another $13M. Because his victims had to sign confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses as part of their settlements, Ailes continued victimizing women in complete privacy. Ailes was probably able to remove many panties off that would otherwise have stayed on if these clauses were illegal. But for the most part, they are perfectly legal under federal law[1], and with a Republican Congress and President Trump in the White House, this will not change anytime soon.
In fact, President Trump loves these clauses so much that everyone who volunteered for his campaign had to sign one prohibiting them from saying anything bad about Trump, his family or his businesses forever, and it also required the volunteers to prevent their employees (if they had them) from doing so. It also prohibited them from campaigning for any other presidential candidate until 2024, even if Trump had had not gotten the nomination.Read More
Is This Problem Limited to the Employment Context?
No. For many years, the Catholic Church settled claims brought against pedophile priests using these same exact clauses, and it still does. The Diocese would transfer the pedophile priest to another distant parish, the family would sign a confidentiality and non-disparagement clause as part of the settlement, and the priest continued to prey upon different children while the risk remained hidden from their parents.
What Happens When You Break a Confidentiality or Non-Disparagement Agreement (“NDA”)?
What Protections Are There Against This Under Existing Law? Read More
Is Anything About These Clauses Good for Employees? Read More
How Did Dennis Rodman Make New Confidentiality Clause Law?
On January 15, 1997, while scrambling for the ball in a game against the Minnesota Timberwolves, Rodman fell into a group of photographers on the sidelines. When he got up, he did the only reasonable thing – he kicked one of them in groin. Read More
Over the last six years, Mr. Cafaro has applied his litigation skills toward representing employees aggressively in overtime and discrimination cases. He has represented hundreds of workers successfully in individual wage and hour cases, including class and collective actions. He also litigates discrimination cases in both the federal and state courts.
Fluency in Spanish helps Mr. Cafaro to communicate with clients in their native language.