'It Really Is A Gag Order': California May Limit Nondisclosure Agreements

Ifeoma Ozoma didn't ever expect to tell the world why she walked away from her job at the social media company Pinterest. She worked on developing the company's policies on thorny issues, from removing vaccine misinformation to stopping the promotion of slave plantations as wedding venues.

Even though there were questions surrounding her departure, she kept quiet for more than a year. Like most employees at major tech firms, she had signed a nondisclosure agreement. It legally barred her from speaking out about nearly everything that went on inside Pinterest — including discrimination and harassment.

"If Pinterest decided to sue me, I would be bankrupted," says Ozoma, who is supporting a bill before the California state legislature that would make such sweeping nondisclosure agreements, or NDAs, illegal.

Her breaking point came last summer. Pinterest, like many other companies, announced its support for the Black Lives Matter movement amid national protests for racial justice. Ozoma was put off by what she saw as performative hypocrisy, and she decided that coming forward with her claims of racial discrimination, among other things, was worth the risk.