Hello. I'm Ryan Cook, and this is Civic Tech Chat, a show that looks at the way technology, politics, and policy impacts the world around us. The tools we use, the way services are delivered, and how we talk about and set policy all shape our society. We'll gather around and have a chat about these things together and more. Either that, or maybe I'll rant about a topic for a while. Before we get started, I do wanna let you all know that we've started a Discord for the podcast. There will be a link with an invite down in the episode description. Do feel free to go check that out. It's a small community right now, but hoping to grow it. It's a great way to reach out to me and let me know things that you might want us to cover or to just hang out and talk about civic tech. Anyway, let's go ahead and start the show. This time, we're gonna be talking about a bill that was passed recently in California, on September 3, in fact. It's Senate Bill three three one, otherwise known as the Silence No More Act. This is a piece of legislation that seeks to put additional controls in place for what can be included in non disclosure agreements or NDAs. An NDA is a document that's commonly used to keep folks from divulging information viewed as confidential, things like trade secrets. Some examples of when you might see that come up or when it might be used are things like when you're starting a new job or a new project that again involves that sort of secret information that a company or other organization maybe doesn't want to become public. Another circumstance might be two such organizations working together on a project where they're collaborating on something and neither of them wants the other to leak some sort of information about the project or that's involved within. NDAs though have some history of abuse. They can be used to silence whistleblowers who might otherwise wanna talk about some unacceptable behaviors or practices that are going on in an organization. You might be thinking things like discrimination or harassment. And it's in that space where this bill starts to come into play. In the words of the California senate floor analysis, which is a document that's put together, you can see posted on the bill tracker, which I'll link in the episode description. But to quote from that, this bill prohibits provisions and settlement agreements that prevent or restrict the disclosure of factual information relating to all claims involving discrimination, harassment, or retaliation for reporting or opposing harassment or discrimination pursuant to the Fair Employment and Housing Act regardless of the protected class on which the claim is based. And it goes on to talk about a bit of exception to that, but that's the effectively the the the main point that it's trying to make there. And it's really a longer way of saying that NDAs won't be able to use the high discrimination or harassment or also reports of those things. Interestingly, it also does allow for severance agreements to make to allow for waivers of those claims. But in doing so, also requires that an employer offering such an agreement that they communicate and make the employee aware of the fact that they have the resort the right to consult an attorney on that agreement. The bill itself will end up building on top of some foundation in California, where they already have something existing called the Stand Act, which was put into place back in 2018. That law seeks to prohibit NDAs from silencing employees in situations involving sexual assault, sexual harassment, or gender based discrimination. But where there's a gap and where the Silence du More Act kinda steps in is that that bill covers specifically gender based claims. This will now broaden the scope to more protected classes, leaning again on that aforementioned Fair Employment and Housing Act. So you'll want to think about things like age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, pregnancy, and race. This will of course end up directly impacting folks that are working in California once the governor signs it and it goes into law. That said, a fair number of companies that are impacted by it, you know, they have large presences in California, but also have a large number of employees outside of California, including a large number of tech companies that you are likely familiar with. You know, the Googles, Facebooks, Apples of the world. And we might then wonder, well, will they, one, end up deciding to back this as it goes through the the end of the legislative process, and two, whether they'll then seek to extend these protections to workers beyond the ones that are in California. And really that seems a bit uncertain at this time. Though notably, Pinterest has come out in support of the legislation, and its CEO has pledged to go forward with the protections as as a company policy regardless of whether the bill is signed into law. That point is really interesting because the bill exists in part because of Pinterest. One of the cosponsors of the bill is Ifeoma Ozuma, who had gone public with their own experiences of discrimination while working as a public policy manager at Pinterest. They had a bunch of legal difficulties that they had to navigate through because at least at the time, Pinterest had a very restrictive NDA. It it basically made it difficult for them to then share their story. Considering all of this, having absorbed all of that information, you might be wondering, well, Ryan, why why are we talking about this today? The reason we are is because in a lot of spaces, NDAs can be used to try and cover problematic behaviors at organizations, and those spaces include the places that many of us work in. Whether that's civic tech, whether that's tech, whether that's government, whether it's some other industry. And I think it's important for us to be aware of the fact that the folks on your teams, folks in other teams, in your organizations, they might be affected by the very abuses that this bill seeks to mitigate. And at the end of this, we all deserve a measure of psychological safety when we're at our workspace. And when it's not happening, and things like discrimination are occurring, then folks should be able to talk about it openly. So again, that's that's why I bring this to your attention as I hope it's something that you'll dig into a bit more yourself. I'll put some more links in the episode description in case you want to read more. But thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Civic Tech Chat, and I'll talk to you again later. You can follow us on Twitter using the handle at civic tech chat. Visit us on the web at civictech.chat, or subscribe to us for content updates wherever it is you download your podcasts.