a unanimous ruling this week from the state supreme court expanded the rights of whistleblowers and victims of workplace discrimination by clarifying A 2019 law inspired by the me too movement Banning employers facing discrimination lawsuits from enforcing gag orders on the employee senior correspondent Joanna gagas explains hers and other voices like hers will be heard in the state of New Jersey there will be no censorship of victims of discrimination that's because New Jersey Supreme Court ruled yesterday that non-disparagement agreements have no Authority in New Jersey the case brought when former Neptune police Sergeant Christine Savage said this after settling a lawsuit with her former employer it has not changed not for a minute it's not going to change it's a good old boy system the department said she violated a non-disparagement clause of the settlement even though the state passed a non-disclosure agreement ban back in 2019 if you're a lay person you don't know really the difference between a non-disclosure agreement which effectively tells you that you can talk about the facts and non-disparagement which allows you to then talk about your feelings about those facts uh and to provide some perspective about them the lower court cided with the Neptune police department saying the 2019 law didn't include non-disparagement agreements but the state supreme court unanimously decided yesterday that the legislator's intent was to ban all such disclosure agreements that bar victims of harassment or discrimination from from speaking out what the Supreme Court did yesterday was close that loophole and effectively say that look if something bad happened to you at work if you are discriminated against or harassed you are now able to speak freely about those facts and about your feelings about those facts and not worry about it not have to be a lawyer and parse whether facts or feelings uh come into it any ambiguity has now been settled and Free Speech won the day this decision was the second this week from the high court protecting victims of harassment Victoria yuchen won her case over a confidentiality directive that she was bound by after she alleged sexual harassment while working at the New Jersey Department of Treasury the Supreme Court ruled that confidentiality directives are a violation of free speech it's a substantial victory for employees rights uh and their constitutional and legal right to speak freely uh and openly about uh you know their allegations or just witnessing um incidents of sexual harassment or discrimination these unanimous decisions that came forward um and came down in the last few days really to show that no matter if it's a Republican appointee or a Democratic appointee this court is really monumentally on the side of survivors on the side of free speech on the side of allowing people to tell their stories and tell their truth and and and hopefully by doing that prevent toxic workplace workplace activity from fostering uh which it usually does when people can't talk about it former state senator Loretta Weinberg wrote the 2019 law that banned non-disclosure agreements she applauds the Court's decision this week you can't act out like that in New Jersey anymore you can't be guaranteed of secrecy and those days are over as we've seen Court decisions can be overturned uh is there a role here now for the legislature to take this a step further and to add this kind of language very specifically into statute yes Joanna you're absolutely right uh a uh Court ruling and we've seen it very recently with roie Wade even settled cases can be overturned so hopefully the legislature will put the words non-disparagement agreements into the NDA law to clarify that was the legislative intent all along a bill was previous ly introduced by Republican senator Dean o scanland and Democratic senator Andrews wicker but never moved these Court decisions though send a clear message that victims in New Jersey will no longer be silenced I'm Joanna gagas NJ Spotlight news [Music]