The Silenced No More Act extends these prohibitions to the confidentiality provisions of settlement agreements that relate to the disclosure of underlying factual information relating to any type of harassment, discrimination, or retaliation in the workplace, whether the protected characteristic is sex, age, national origin, race, or other characteristics covered by California law. As the name suggests, confidentiality clauses require that you keep everything related to the case, including the facts of the case, complete and absolutely confidential. It can be tempting to accept confidentiality agreements and non-diversified agreements, especially if you are offered an agreement that you like and want to accept. However, talk to your lawyer about how the terms of your settlement agreement may affect you. And remember that if you win in a lawsuit, a court will almost never ask you to keep the facts or outcome of your case secret. I have over 25 years of experience representing individual clients and large and small companies in transactions such as mergers and acquisitions, private securities offerings, commercial loans and commercial enterprises (supply contracts, manufacturing agreements, joint ventures, intellectual property licenses, etc.). My specialty is complex and new drawing. A possible red flag to watch out for: “The non-insult agreement should only cover behavior from the date of its signature. It must explicitly exclude everything that has happened before – because an employee may have already torn their employer to 15 people,” says Michael Elkins, labor lawyer and founder of MLE Law. Clarify with your employer or an employment lawyer to make sure the agreement only covers what you do after signing it and nothing you`ve already done, he points out. The law also prohibits employers from requiring California employees, as a condition of their employment, to enter into non-derogatory provisions or other contractual provisions that limit the employee`s ability to disclose information about working conditions and other illegal acts in the workplace. The new law only allows employers to include this type of restriction if the current agreement contains specific language that the disclosure is protected by law. In particular, employment contracts must now include a provision stating: “Nothing in this Agreement will prevent you from discussing or disclosing information about illegal acts in the workplace, such as harassment or discrimination or any other conduct that you have reason to believe to be illegal.” When you resolve a consumer case, whether it`s a seizure, collection, or credit issue, the other party (bank, credit card, business, or lender) will almost always want you to sign a confidentiality agreement as a condition of resolving a case.

Consumers should think about these clauses before signing them and understand how these clauses may affect them. Sometimes the other party wants you to sign so-called non-insulting agreements. These agreements require not only that you keep the facts and results of your settlement confidential, but also that you do not say anything negative about the defendant in a public or private forum. In general, these agreements use broad language that includes all kinds of insults, from IRL tirades to bad speeches that occur in writing and everything in between. Granovsky offers some examples of the language an employee might see in a non-insult clause (see his blog for more examples): Before the new year, employers should review employee manuals, severance agreements, and any other agreements with non-disclosure or non-insult provisions to reflect these changes in the law. On the one hand, if you`ve been taken by surprise by a layoff and need money to pay your rent and buy groceries for a few months until you find a new job, you may decide to sign a non-insult clause to get the severance pay offered to you. On the other hand, you can have savings and are motivated by various factors to pass on the money so that you can freely say what you want. While the new legislation does not prohibit provisions requiring the confidentiality of settlement amounts or the protection of the identity of the applicant, these provisions are subject to the same requirement to specify which disclosures remain protected by law. Similarly, the law does not restrict waivers, general exemptions from claims, or privacy language that covers other legally sensitive information, such as trade secrets or sensitive business information, that has nothing to do with illegal acts in the workplace. This article also deals with non-slur clauses. “When an employee is hired, it`s kind of implicit that you`re not going to talk about the company while you`re there because they might fire you,” Granovsky says. “But after a person leaves, they may have bad feelings for their former employer, [and] how on earth are you going to get them to resign?” he adds.

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