You can read the dismissal letter here: 

You can read my full position statement here: ​

​-Ashley 

The petition works through a specific legal mechanism. CERCLA — the Superfund toxic waste dump clean-up law — includes a provision, § 105(d), that lets any person petition EPA to assess a site for the National Priorities List. And here's the important part: once you file, EPA must respond. The statute gives the Agency twelve months to either complete a "preliminary assessment" of the site, or send the petitioner a written explanation of why it won't. EPA doesn't get to shrug. Congress built this provision specifically so ordinary people could force the government to look at contaminated sites it was ignoring.

So in February 2026, I started that twelve-month clock. We're now around the six-month mark so I sent EPA Region 1 a formal status inquiry asking where things stand. Within a day, I got two written answers — one from the Superfund program, one from EPA's enforcement lawyers.

The Superfund program answered first. EPA has assigned a Site Assessment Manager to my petition: Mandy Liao of Region 1's Superfund and Emergency Management Division. A Site Assessment Manager is the EPA staffer who shepherds a site through the Superfund evaluation pipeline. 

Ms. Liao's response confirmed that:

• EPA is actively reviewing the petition. In her words, EPA is "reviewing the Petition for Preliminary Assessment" and "currently evaluating the Site...".
• EPA acknowledged the deadline, in writing. The twelve-month statutory clock runs out on February 13, 2027. If EPA decides an assessment is warranted, that's the completion date. If EPA decides it isn't, the Agency committed to sending me its reasons in writing by that same date.
• No decision yet, either way. The site hasn't been entered into EPA's Superfund database (called SEMS) and the formal assessment hasn't started. EPA is at the threshold stage and promised to notify me once it decides what to do next.

The EPA has now confirmed in writing that it's bound to this process and this deadline. By February 13, 2027, one of two things happens: EPA assesses the site, or EPA explains itself. Both are formal agency actions. Both give Boston an answer it has never had. And if the explanation doesn't hold up, I can take it to a federal judge.

​When I filed the CERCLA petition, I also served a Notice of Intent to File a Citizen Suit under the Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Act lets private citizens sue polluters directly in federal court — but first you have to send a notice and give the government a window to bring its own enforcement case. If the government steps up and "diligently prosecutes" the violations, the citizen suit is off. If it doesn't, the courthouse doors open.

So my status inquiry also asked: has EPA brought any enforcement action on the violations in my notice? The Superfund team kicked that question to EPA's Office of Regional Counsel, and Jeff Kopf, Senior Enforcement Counsel for Region 1, answered in writing:

1. No. EPA has not commenced any enforcement action under the Clean Water Act with respect to my notice. For citizen-suit purposes, that's the answer that matters — there is no government prosecution standing in the way.
2. I also asked whether EPA had referred the matter to the Department of Justice or the Army Corps of Engineers. On that one, EPA declined to answer, citing its "long-standing policy" of not disclosing the existence of ongoing referrals.

Notice what that second answer isn't. It isn't "no." EPA could have simply said no referral exists. Instead it invoked the policy it uses to protect referrals that do. Draw your own conclusions.

When I served my citizen suit notice, I voluntarily extended the standard sixty-day waiting period to a full year to accommodate the year-long CERCLA process. If I have to take this matter to court myself, I'll likely bundle the claims.

Now the petition has a named Site Assessment Manager, an active review, and a written deadline. That's the process I extended the clock for, and it's happening.

Between now and February 13, 2027, I'll post updates here as things move. If EPA completes the assessment and the site scores the way I expect, the South Bay heads toward the National Priorities List — the first Superfund site in Boston's history. If EPA declines, I get a written explanation, and I already have the citizen suit noticed, preserved, and ready to file.

Either way, this is now on the record, on a clock, and in writing — which is exactly where I want it.

- Ashley 

Read the emails with US EPA Region 1: ​

Read more in the Petition and the dedicated South Bay pages: South Bay/Boston Marsh

My public comment and public presentation slides. 

WHAT HAPPENED
On March 30, 2026, a federal magistrate judge in the Northern District of California ordered Gjovik to "de-publish" speech about Apple's workplace practices and treat anything Apple designates as "Confidential" as off-limits — indefinitely, with no end date, and with no court ever determining whether the information is actually confidential. Apple's own motion had been denied for failure to follow court procedures. The court then gave Apple more than Apple asked for — as a freebie. The boss couldn't even be bothered to do the paperwork, and the court did the boss's job for it. No hearing was held. No evidence was reviewed. No findings were made.

The information Apple wants silenced: Gjovik's testimony and public statements about Apple asking female employees to track their menstrual cycles, measure their cervical mucus, and track intimate details of their reproductive and sexual health — all for product development research. Gjovik declined to participate and complained.

Gjovik also complained about other workplace studies and surveillance. Apple claims all of it is secret — and will now move to designate all of it as permanently confidential under the court's blanket order, which Apple is using as an NDA that protects only Apple's business interests. 

The order does not protect privacy. It inverts it: the corporation that invaded its workers' privacy is now using a federal judge to stop the worker from telling anyone about it — while Apple is under investigation by multiple government agencies, including the NLRB and NIH, for the same conduct.

Apple has never designated a single document it produced in the lawsuit as confidential. The only thing Apple has ever designated is Gjovik's own deposition testimony — her own words about her own body and her own workplace complaints. Apple then sought contempt sanctions for Gjovik discussing the same topics she has been publicly discussing since 2021, that she filed in NLRB charges, that she pled in her lawsuit, that appear in published court orders, in a peer-reviewed medical journal, on a federal clinical trials registry, and in press coverage in the United States, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.

The NLRB previously found merit in Gjovik's allegations, filed suit against Apple, and reached a national settlement in April 2025 requiring Apple to stop enforcing confidentiality policies that restrict workers' rights to discuss wages, hours, and working conditions. Apple agreed. Then Apple asked a federal court to do the same thing through a different mechanism.

WHY THIS MATTERS TO EVERY WORKER

This case is not just about one worker and one tech company. It is about a tool that any employer can use against any worker — and that courts are approving without scrutiny.
Here is what happened, step by step:

• A worker experienced something at work — her employer asked her to submit to studies of her reproductive health and intimate life.
• She said no and complained — to her manager, to her coworkers, to the NLRB, to the EPA, to the press, and to the public.
• Her employer fired her.
• She sued for retaliation.
• During the lawsuit, the employer obtained a "protective order" — a standard court order meant to protect genuinely sensitive business documents exchanged during litigation.
• Instead of using the protective order for documents, the employer used it to designate the worker's own testimony about her own experiences as the employer's "confidential business information."
• When the worker continued to speak publicly about the same experiences she has been describing for five years, the employer asked the court to hold her in contempt and order her to delete her speech.
• The court denied the employer's motion — but then ordered the worker to delete her speech anyway, with no hearing, no evidence, and no motion requesting that relief.
• The worker now faces an indefinite gag order. Anything her employer stamps "Confidential" becomes speech she is prohibited from uttering — and her employer gets to decide what that includes, with no judicial review before the restriction takes effect.

This is not unique to Gjovik's case. Workers who have litigated against Apple report being subjected to the same pattern: Apple obtains a protective order, designates the worker's complaints as confidential, uses the designations to derail the case, and the worker ends up silenced — whether by the court's order or by their own lawyer's advice to stop talking before things get worse. Plaintiff-side attorneys have described refusing to take cases against Apple entirely because the return on investment is destroyed by Apple's litigation tactics. The protective order is the mechanism that makes all of it possible.

If this framework stands, here is what it means for workers:

YOUR BOSS CAN CLAIM YOUR COMPLAINTS ARE A TRADE SECRET.
If you report unsafe conditions, harassment, wage theft, or invasive surveillance, your employer can designate your account of what happened as its "confidential information" — turning your own words against you.

YOU CAN BE GAGGED FROM TALKING TO YOUR COWORKERS.
Organizing requires communication. If your description of the problem is designated "Confidential," you cannot share it with the coworkers you are trying to organize — or you risk contempt of court.

YOU CAN BE GAGGED FROM TALKING TO THE GOVERNMENT.
The gag order in this case makes no exception for communications with the NLRB, OSHA, the EPA, or any other government agency. A worker under this order who describes her working conditions to an NLRB investigator could be held in contempt.

YOU CAN BE GAGGED FROM TALKING TO THE PRESS.
The order requires deletion of blog posts and social media. A worker who speaks to a journalist about her workplace experiences could be ordered to delete the interview.

YOUR EMPLOYER DECIDES WHAT YOU CAN SAY.
The scope of the gag order is defined by whatever the employer designates. No judge reviews the designation before it takes effect. The employer stamps "Confidential"; the court enforces. The worker must comply or face contempt.

THE GAG HAS NO END DATE.
The order says speech is restricted "until found otherwise" — with no sunset, no timeline for adjudication, and no guaranteed process for resolution. It can last forever.

YOUR EMPLOYER CAN USE THIS TO WIN THE LAWSUIT.
In this case, Apple's defense is that the worker was fired for "leaking confidential information." By designating her speech as confidential, Apple gets a court order saying her speech is confidential — before any trial determines whether it actually was. The gag order becomes evidence for the employer's defense.

THIS IS WHAT CONGRESS OUTLAWED NINETY-FOUR YEARS AGO
The Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932 was passed because federal courts had become the bosses' favorite weapon — issuing injunctions to break strikes, ban picket lines, and silence workers who spoke up. Courts turned themselves into the enforcement arm of the employer class. Congress stripped federal courts of the power to issue injunctions in labor disputes because the courts couldn't stop siding with the employers.
What this court did on March 30 is the same thing Congress outlawed ninety-four years ago: a federal judge issued an injunction silencing a worker's speech about a labor dispute, at the employer's request, without a hearing, without findings, and without meeting a single requirement of the law Congress passed to stop exactly this. The Norris-LaGuardia Act specifically protects "giving publicity to the existence of, or the facts involved in, any labor dispute." That is precisely what Gjovik has been doing — and precisely what the court has ordered her to stop.

WHAT THE COALITION IS CALLING FOR
The organizations supporting this rally call on:
— Federal courts to stop enforcing employer confidentiality designations as gag orders on worker speech without independent judicial review, findings of harm, and constitutional analysis;
— The Northern District of California to revise its Model Protective Order to include explicit protections for worker speech about working conditions, consistent with the NLRA, the First Amendment, and California labor law;
— Congress to investigate the use of litigation protective orders as a tool for suppressing worker organizing and whistleblower activity;
— State and federal legislators to close the loophole that allows employers to use litigation protective orders to achieve the same worker silencing that the Speak Out Act, Silenced No More Act, and NLRA were enacted to prohibit;
— The NLRB to issue guidance on the interaction between litigation protective orders and Section 7 rights, and to enforce the existing settlement Apple is violating;
— Apple Inc. to withdraw its confidentiality designations over worker testimony about working conditions, comply with the April 2025 NLRB settlement it signed, and stop using the federal courts to silence the workers it fired for speaking.

RALLY DETAILS
WHAT: Rally and press conference for workers' speech rights
WHEN: Thursday, April 2, 2026, 12:00 PM
WHERE: Phillip Burton Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102 (main entrance, Golden Gate Avenue side)
SPEAKERS:
— Ashley Gjovik, Plaintiff in Gjovik v. Apple Inc.
— Representatives of LaborMedia, Whistleblower United (WBU), California Coalition for Workers Memorial Day, WorkWeek, and the United Front Committee for a Labor Party (UFCLP)
— [Additional speakers TBD]

BACKGROUND
Gjovik v. Apple Inc., Case No. 3:23-cv-04597-EMC, is pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California before Judge Edward M. Chen. Gjovik filed claims under California Labor Code sections 1102.5, 6310, 232.5, and 96(k), and a Tameny wrongful termination claim, alleging Apple fired her for reporting environmental hazards at a Superfund site where she worked, a skunkworks chip fab next to where she lived, reporting invasive employee surveillance and coercive medical studies, reporting other misconduct and risks/hazards, and organizing with coworkers about working conditions. The NLRB has found merit in dozens of Gjovik's allegations against Apple, the EPA conducted enforcement inspections based on her complaints and brought the first formal environmental enforcement action ever taken against Apple, and the GAO cited her public comments in a published report.
In February 2026, Gjovik filed a formal rulemaking petition with the U.S. Courts Advisory Committee on Civil Rules (Suggestion 26-CV-6), asking the Committee to address the growing use of protective order templates to circumvent workers' speech rights. The petition documents how courts issue these orders without the good cause findings required by the Federal Rules — and how employers then use them to silence workers' complaints. The Committee is scheduled to consider the petition on April 14, 2026.
On March 31, 2026, Gjovik filed three Rule 72(a) objections challenging the magistrate judge's orders, raising thirty issues including prior restraint on speech, lack of statutory authority, violation of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, Garmon preemption, the bankruptcy automatic stay, and the use of the protective order to prejudge the central merits question in a whistleblower retaliation case.

Case documents are publicly available on CourtListener:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67843254/gjovik-v-apple-inc/

—
Ashley M. Gjøvik
BS, JD, PMP
(415) 964-6272

E-filed statement: 

E-filed appendix with evidence packet: 

Apple did manage to get a next-day cryptic, non-public, non-recorded, evidence-free "telephonic discovery conference" scheduled for Feb. 20 2026 where I was denied a request to have time to even file an Opposition, and my objections demanding evidence, proper motions and briefing, a Court Reporter and basic Due Process were all implicitly denied.

So basically recreating that Sept. 9 2021 email from Apple's Workplace Violence team demanding I get on the phone with their interrogator and then firing me for "non-cooperation" when I said I wanted a record of the conversation because I thought they were going to hurt me, which of course they were and having a record of them doing that makes it more difficult for them to do with the flare they so enjoy.

I filed three responses today across two federal courts: an Opposition and a Motion to Quash in the US District Court, and a Motion for Sanctions in the Bankruptcy Court for Apple's violation of the automatic stay. They're linked and attached below. There are copies of all of the new NLRB charges attached to the Opposition filing if you'd like to review this incredible progress we're making on documenting Apple's absolutely ridiculous behavior. 

To that point, none of Apple's behavior is surprising. This is what old, crotchety Big Tech employers do when they're not used to employees organizing and pushing back. They clearly think they can get away with unfair labor practices and overt retaliation because they've always gotten away with it. Their entire playbook depends on employees being too scared or too broke to fight.

I also think Apple is flipping out right now because I managed to escape out of that dank submarine cesspool bunker in Boston I had been trapped in for a couple years. I was back in Santa Clara County for only two weeks catching up on many overdue filings and litigation deliverables. Apple's lawyers apparently had become complacent with me being mostly incapacitated, and so they apparently panicked to see me back in action. So they did... this?!

Listen, even if the court or NLRB won't intervene, even if every institution that's supposed to protect workers fails — this is how employees do it. You just keep pushing back. You hold the line. You expose the truth. You call them out. You might get slowed down by personal stuff here and there, but you bounce back. You tell them to eat rocks when they're union busting. You put it all on the record. You make them do their dirt in public. And you don't stop.

When they freak out like this, you file more charges. You document the freakout and you push harder. Someday they're going to have to budge and you swoop in and you get bargaining agreement signed immediately - do not release your pressure for one moment or they will squirm away like the little worms they are. 

Apple's letter complained to the court that I was orchestrating a "campaign" to expose their suppression of worker complaints. Yes. That's what labor organizing is. Welcome to it, Apple. 

​-Ashley 

2/20 - Motion to Quash 

2/20 - Opposition/Objections

2/20 - Motion for Sanctions

The December 16, 2025 Deposition

I was deposed in my federal retaliation lawsuit against Apple on December 16, 2025. The deposition was taken by Apple's counsel (a senior partner at a major firm). What happened during that deposition, as documented in the charge's cover letter and attached transcript excerpts, forms the factual core of the new charge. Apple's counsel questioned me about Apple's misconduct and discipline policy — the same type of policy that was the subject of the prior NLRB settlement. When asked whether I understood that violating confidentiality obligations could warrant immediate termination, I responded that I didn't understand the policy's terms, that they were overbroad, and that "NLRB said those terms were unlawful and that Apple could no longer enforce them and had to withdraw them from their policies."

Apple's counsel responded by immediately designating the entire remainder of the deposition as "Confidential" pursuant to the civil litigation's protective order. The exchange, as quoted in the charge, is striking. When I objected that the designation was premature, Apple's counsel didn't know what I would say next and couldn't pre-designate unknown testimony; then Apple's counsel asserted the procedural right to pre-designate under the protective order and told me to use the order's challenge procedures if I disagreed. When I protested that Apple was "misusing confidentiality terms" to "hide protected statements" immediately after I invoked the NLRA, Apple's counsel called a break, then designated pages 66 through 305 (of a 336-page transcript) as confidential. Approximately 72% of the deposition was designated as confidential.

Seven Weeks of Silence

The blanket designation remained in effect for seven weeks — 50 days!!! — until February 4, 2026. During that period, I was supposedly unable to discuss the substance of my own testimony, including my descriptions of protected concerted activity and my invocation of NLRA rights, with coworkers, the public, or the NLRB.

When Apple finally narrowed its designations, approximately 99% of the previously designated material was conceded to be non-confidential. This is legally significant because the protective order itself prohibited "mass, indiscriminate, or routinized designations" and required that designations be limited to "specific material that qualifies under appropriate standards." A blanket designation covering 72% of a deposition, maintained for 50 days, where 99% is ultimately conceded to be non-confidential, appears to violate the very order Apple invoked to justify the designation.

What Apple Claims to Own

When the narrowed designations finally arrived on February 4, 2026, they came on an unsigned, undated six-page PDF that Apple refused to email to me directly, refused to sign, and refused to date. Apple emailed it to the court reporter and said it was for my "awareness." The final designation list contained over 140 terms. Some were facially absurd — the letter "N," the word "hardware," and generic engineering development phrases. But the designations that matter most for NLRA purposes are the ones Apple applied to the substance of my protected concerted activity.

The charge quotes three deposition excerpts where I testified about my complaints to my supervisor regarding Apple's invasive workplace studies. In these excerpts, I described:

• An ovulation study where Apple asked female employees to measure their cervical mucus
• A bed-sensor study that monitored vitals during sleep and required any sexual partner or co-sleeper to register with Apple and sign an NDA
• An ear scanning study that I declined, describing the physical discomfort and my objection to Apple maintaining a library of employees' ear images

This testimony (an employee describing my complaints about workplace conditions to my supervisor and to coworkers) is textbook protected concerted activity under Section 7. I was testifying about raising concerns on behalf of myself and my coworkers about invasive employer practices directed at their bodies. Apple's active confidentiality designations, as documented in the charge, include: "ovulation study or they were asking females to measure our cervical mucus," "ovulation," "measuring female employees' cervical mucus," "my cervical mucus," and "mucus -- the cervical mucus secretion."

Each of these was individually designated across multiple separate deposition excerpts. This was not a single overbroad designation that inadvertently swept in bodily terminology. Someone at Apple's law firm reviewed the transcript, identified each instance where I described what Apple asked my body to do, and separately flagged it as Apple Confidential.

As I state in the charge: "Apple does not own my vagina, has no legitimate interest in who I have sex with, and its outrageous Apple would even imply it could make these claims."

The April 2025 settlement included several specific commitments that appear to be directly contradicted by Apple's deposition conduct:

• The revised IPA preserves the right to "discuss or disclose information about Your or others' wages, hours, or working conditions." Apple designated testimony about working conditions as confidential.
• The notice posting promises Apple will not "advise you that you are subject to discipline for violating overly broad rules regarding confidential or proprietary information." Apple's counsel asked under oath whether discussing working conditions was "a breach of your confidentiality obligations."
• Apple agreed not to enforce its definition of "Proprietary Information" to cover terms and conditions of employment. Apple's confidentiality designations enforce that definition through the protective order mechanism.

Violation of a Board settlement resolving 8(a)(1) charges is itself an independent 8(a)(1) violation. And the default provision means the remedy upon non-compliance is potentially automatic: deemed admissions, no trial, and ex parte Court of Appeals enforcement.

The "Whitelisting" of Section 7 Rights

Perhaps the most doctrinally significant allegation concerns Apple's counsel's repeated questioning about whether one of my coworkers was "whitelisted" to receive information about working conditions. The deposition excerpts in the charge show Apple's counsel asking whether I was "permitted" to share information with a coworker, whether the coworker was "whitelisted," and — when I stated I didn't understand the question — spelling out: "How about allowed? A-L-L-O-W-E-D?"

This line of questioning establishes a framework where the right to discuss working conditions is conditioned on employer authorization. Under Section 7, that right is unconditional. An employee does not need to be "permitted" or "allowed" or "whitelisted" to discuss wages, hours, or working conditions with a coworker. The right is statutory.

The charge argues that Apple's questioning creates a work rule permitting discussion of employer misconduct only among its victims (those who were also "whitelisted" for the same surveillance) and treating discussion with any other coworker as a confidentiality breach. This is a per se violation of Section 8(a)(1). The Board has consistently held that employer rules conditioning Section 7 activity on prior authorization are unlawful.

24/7 Surveillance from Personal Devices

The charge also alleges that Apple placed my cell phone and iCloud account on a "whitelist" (a different use of the same term) that caused continuous, 24/7 capture and automatic upload of photographs, video, audio recordings, biometric data, and GPS location whenever the camera detected a face — inside and outside the workplace, including in my home and including images in states of undress.

Under National Steel & Shipbuilding Co., 324 NLRB 499 (1997), and Aladdin Gaming, LLC, 345 NLRB 585 (2005), employer surveillance that would reasonably tend to coerce employees in the exercise of Section 7 rights violates Section 8(a)(1). The standard is objective: the question is whether the surveillance would chill a reasonable employee, not whether the employer intended to suppress union activity. The charge notes that the surveillance captured communications with coworkers about working conditions, communications with the NLRB, communications with journalists, and organizing discussions.

This would represent an unprecedented scope of employer surveillance in Board case law — continuous audio, video, biometric, and location capture from a personal device, 24/7, extending into the employee's home.

Garmon Preemption and the Forum Problem

Count 10 of the charge raises a preemption argument that, whatever its outcome, illustrates the institutional trap the case has created. Under San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U.S. 236 (1959), when activity is arguably subject to Section 7 or Section 8, federal courts must defer to the Board's exclusive competence. Under Lodge 76, IAM v. WERC, 427 U.S. 132 (1976), preemptive jurisdiction extends to conduct Congress intended to leave unregulated as well as conduct it intended to regulate.

The charge argues that Apple's insistence that my "only option" is to challenge the confidentiality designations through the federal court (via memoranda to Apple and escalation to the Magistrate Judge) constitutes a prohibition on filing NLRB charges and an assertion that the protective order stripped the Board of jurisdiction. If the Board agrees, the federal court lacks jurisdiction over these NLRA questions. If the Board disagrees or declines to act, it is effectively ceding jurisdiction over claims expressly about NLRA charges, protected concerted activity, and Board proceedings to a court that (as documented in the same charge) coerced the employee into stipulating to the very protective order at issue while the employer's counsel discussed the foreseeable possibility of driving the employee to suicide.

The Institutional Dynamics

The charge does not exist in a vacuum. As I noted, I previously filed a charge alleging Apple violated the April 2025 settlement through its litigation conduct in the same federal case. The Region and Compliance Office declined to investigate or take action, and refused to state findings in writing. This occurred, the charge notes, after Apple's own former defense counsel was appointed as the new NLRB General Counsel. The charge argues that the Region's prior refusal to act emboldened Apple, and that Apple's conduct has escalated since the first reported violation went unenforced. The charge presents this as a pattern: each time the Board declines to enforce its own settlement, Apple pushes further.

This creates an institutional dilemma that the charge's structure appears designed to exploit. If the Board declines to act on this charge, it will have reviewed a filing documenting Apple designating employees' cervical mucus as confidential business information, interrogating a former employee about whether discussing working conditions with coworkers was a policy violation, and maintaining a 50-day blanket gag order on protected activity that was 99% unjustified (all in violation of a settlement the Board itself brokered) and decided that none of this warranted investigation. 

​What makes this charge notable beyond its individual allegations is its structural design. The charge is simultaneously:

1. An NLRB filing that creates a federal agency record of Apple's conduct;
2. A vehicle for public disclosure of the specific terms and testimony Apple designated as confidential because its absurd and clearly illegal; 
3. A court docket filing via the notice of pendency, placing the material before the judge who controls the protective order; 
4. A settlement enforcement mechanism that may trigger automatic default remedies; 
5. A documented dare — paragraph 48 expressly states that if Apple seeks sanctions for the disclosures in the charge, another charge will be filed. 

Each function reinforces the others. The NLRB filing is protected activity under Section 8(a)(4), making any Apple retaliation for the filing itself a new violation. The public disclosure through the NLRB filing renders the confidentiality designations functionally moot for the disclosed terms. The court docket filing puts the judge on notice of the parallel Board proceeding and the Garmon preemption issue. And the settlement enforcement argument converts each documented violation into a potential trigger for the automatic default provision.

The Limits of Confidentiality as a Weapon

This case, if credited, represents something genuinely new in NLRB practice: an employer using a civil litigation protective order (one the employer selected, insisted upon, and applied) to reimpose the substance of confidentiality policies the employer agreed to rescind in a Board settlement. It is, in effect, an end-run around the settlement through a different procedural mechanism, using the deference courts give to confidentiality designations in discovery to achieve what the NLRA prohibits.

The specific content of Apple's designations makes this more than a procedural dispute. When an employer claims that an employee's testimony about my own cervical mucus is the employer's confidential business information — repeatedly, deliberately, across multiple transcript excerpts — it has moved past any recognizable assertion of trade secret protection into something that more closely resembles a claim of ownership over the employee's body and the employee's right to describe what was done to it.

The National Labor Relations Act was enacted to protect employees' right to discuss their working conditions. When those working conditions include employer-directed monitoring of female employees' reproductive biology, the right to discuss those conditions necessarily includes the right to use the words that describe them. Ovulation. Cervical mucus. Menstruation. These are not engineering specifications or product roadmaps. An employee's right to protest those practices to coworkers, to the NLRB, to the public — cannot be extinguished by placing those words on an unsigned PDF and calling them proprietary.

Whether the current Board will act on this charge is an open question. What is not an open question is that the charge and its supporting materials are now part of the public record — on the NLRB's docket, on the federal court's docket, and in the hands of anyone who cares to read them. The file will outlast every person currently sitting in a position to act on it or ignore it. And the default provision, loaded and waiting, does not expire with any particular General Counsel's term.

Apple's lawyers may have had the procedural right to designate deposition testimony as confidential. What they did not have was the right to designate protected concerted activity as confidential, the right to condition Section 7 activity on employer authorization, or the right to claim ownership over an employee's bodily secretions. The transcript documents them doing all three, on the record, while the court reporter typed.

The charge was filed with NLRB Region 32, on February 16, 2026. The cover letter and attached exhibits are linked below.​

By 1854, the South Bay covered 306 acres. By 1898, it covered only about sixty acres. Today it is a neighborhood. The fill is still there. The garbage is still there. The wood piles are rotting. And the ocean is still trying to come in twice a day through 1,360 miles of Victorian brick sewers that were documented as "ill-adapted" and "usually leaky" in 1885, so is certainly in even worse condition now. They also documented that the groundwater in the fill across the old South Bay is "tidally influenced" meaning the tides are ebbing and flowing through the garbage, ash, sewage, and hazardous waste every day, pushing it inland and moving it all around.
​
​​....

I moved to Boston in late 2023. I lived in a basement apartment at Worcester Square. It was an unfinished 1864 Victorian cellar one block from the former City Hospital, directly over filled tidelands connected to the Roxbury Canal through the combined sewer system and so close that it would have been part of the high tide "cesspool." Boston's zoning code forbids basement apartments in South End and South Boston. The City granted a variance anyway in 1991. When I asked Boston for records about why basements are forbidden they claimed to have no records or documentation and to not remember why.

The apartment had no modern building envelope, legally insufficient ventilation, active water intrusion, and recurring sewage backups. The air was thick with sewer gas and hydrogen sulfide. I reported these conditions starting in July 2025. The City documented many violations (holes in the walls, crumbling walls and brick, insecure counters, cross-metering, broken floor tiles, etc.) but refused to document anything related to sewage, plumbing, ventilation, mold, or drainage. The Mayor's Office even sent a task force who confirmed the apartment was unsafe, confirmed violations while concurrently stating the City would not cite them, and then asked me why I didn't just leave — as if it were my burden to fix and/or absurd for me to tolerate conditions they refuse to condemn. 

I was sleeping 14 to 18 hours a day. I had sinus pain and rashes. My hair was falling out. My teeth were deteriorating, a chunk of my molar fell out. My body smelled like "death." 

I purchased a microscope. I was covered in bacterial growths. I identified organisms that should not exist in a residential building: Mariprofundus ferrooxydans, an iron-oxidizing bacterium first described from deep-sea hydrothermal vents; Beggiatoa, a sulfur-oxidizing bacterium whose presence proves hydrogen sulfide is reaching living space; Thioploca, which requires both nitrate and sulfide; Thiolava veneris, a pioneer colonizer of volcanic substrates first described in 2017; and cable bacteria capable of centimeter-scale electron transport that produced electrical shocks strong enough to stun me and leave my dog unable to walk for two days.

I also discovered a wall void with dissolution patterns consistent with biogenic sulfuric acid corrosion — the mechanism that destroys concrete sewers — with Beggiatoa colonizing the edges. The void functions as a chimney from the subsurface to occupied living space.  My hair samples came back substantially Gammaproteobacteria. My blood was consistent with colorful filaments and iron-oxidizing bacteria in my bloodstream — organisms that eat iron for energy, in my blood, which is iron-rich and oxygenated, which is functionally identical to their natural habitat at a hydrothermal vent. The extreme fatigue quickly improved with beef liver iron supplementation and Trametes versicolor powder for Beta-glucan polysaccharides. They organisms thrived on these substances when cultured, confirming I was replacing what they had been depleting. While scientifically validating, this is also emotionally horrifying. 

I brought samples to medical providers at Boston Medical Center, located one block from my apartment. This was the successor institution to the City Hospital, the same hospital that had been discharging infected bodily fluids and radioactive waste into the shared sewer system one block from my apartment for 160 years, the same hospital that had a decades-long epidemic of hospital-acquired infections it never explained. Clinicians examined my microscope photos of several of the organisms and their own sample under microscopy, admitted they were novel and not in existing reference materials, and refused to provide medical care, botched labs, harassed me, and intentionally mis-coded the medical visits, or didn't send it to insurance at all, leaving me with a $1k+ debit and helping drive me into Chapter 7 bankruptcy, where I am now. The hospital that helped create the conditions refused to treat the consequences, and took every action available to avoid documenting its own misconduct, obstructing witness reports, and hiding evidence of their wrongdoing. 

When the City finally cited a ventilation violation at the unregistered rental property (that there was illegally insufficient ventilation and light in the basement apartment), my landlord's partner (a person I had filed a police report against for breaking and entering and threatened assault) was permitted to appear at the City's hearing and argue that the zoning variance exempted the property owner from providing tenants with oxygen, even if I might die. When I objected and asked for his removal, City officials told me to shut my mouth, let him talk, and only speak when called upon. The City upheld the violations, cancelled the reinspection, took no enforcement action, and refused to provide me copies of the defendants petitions and communications. 

I found this baffling and it was what caused me to drop everything and start looking into the environmental conditions in this area. There had to be a reason everyone was going to such lengths to cover something up and I wanted to find out what that something was. It took two months and most of it is documented in the Petition/Notice but there was even more. In addition, I found other issues.

Like, the geology - this is the part that took me the longest to be certain about, and the reason the petition took much longer than it should have. The geological evidence in the petition presents a case that the Boston Basin is a bolide impact site — specifically, a ground-zero impact site for the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, dating to approximately 12,900 years ago. If confirmed, this would be the first identification of such a site and would make the Boston Basin an irreplaceable resource for scientific research.

The evidence includes: basin-wide kaolinization of bedrock to depths exceeding 200 feet along fault-controlled pathways, requiring temperatures of 175–350°C with no volcanic or tectonic heat source in over 400 million years; a thermal decay curve from over 700°C down to below 200°C; a mineral suite that matches the predicted alteration products of an ordinary chondrite meteorite mixed with sedimentary target rock, including at least three titanium-bearing phases representing one original mineral in multiple stages of post-impact alteration; Rock Quality Designation of 0% at virtually every boring in the basin center; platinum group elements at five times background that are not decreasing after cessation of anthropogenic sources; and a damage pattern that is inverted (shallowest rock most destroyed, deepest rock least damaged) the opposite of every natural metamorphic process and exactly correct for an impact from above. 

I only found this because I had to define the geology and hydrology for my CERCLA and Clean Water Act complaint, Boston's geology and hydrology is described as notoriously "complex" and "unknowable," and most of its key features use mythological terms invented by a very questionable Harvard University professor in the mid and late 19th century insisting that anything unknown must be explained by glaciers. These Elvish-like concepts (drumlins, tillite, moraine, till, erratic boulders, etc.) have always been generalized theories often seen as contentious and debated. As time passed, especially over the last few decades, advances in science were able to put forward evidence-based explanations for many glacial-related formations and the explanations were often included causation not related to glaciers at all.

However, Boston held on to the glacial explanations with a white-knuckled grasp, and left me in an impossible situation because as a prior Engineering Program Manager and a lawyer, I refused to recite unsubstantiated glacial Elvish and ignore a significant amount of evidence (from articles, borings, assessment, etc.) that is facially impossible to explain with glaciers (for example, glaciers cannot cause heat-shock alternations because they're cold, not hot). Comparing Boston's evidence to modern impact analysis, a bolide impact explains everything that is supposedly unexplainable. Further, the Younger Dryas research advancement over the last five years and the already admitted overlapping timing of Boston's features with that timeline, confirm this isn't any bolide swarm impact zone, it appears to be the first identified "ground zero" for a Younger Dryas impact to the Laurentia ice sheet over New England and would thus validate the hypothesis. 

If true, it would also significantly change any environmental analysis, remediation planning, and risk assessment for the pollution noted above. It also would have introduced its own pollution and hazards. The impact-generated sulfide mineralogy appears to be actively producing acid mine drainage, dissolving metals from the hydrothermal ore assemblage, and discharging them into Boston Harbor via groundwater through a fracture network. If so, every conceptual site model in the basin is built on incorrect geological assumptions: the marine clay is not a reliable confining layer, the till is not glacial sediment, and the bedrock is not an impermeable base. The bedrock is itself an active contamination source that no remediation plan has ever accounted for, and the communities most affected — Roxbury, Dorchester, East Boston, South Boston — are disproportionately low-income communities of color built on the most severely impact-damaged substrate, receiving the highest flux of naturally leached metals from below. Accordingly I argued the bolide impact was also a CERCLA release and under the CERCLA petition statute, EPA will be required to assess this as an impact site (likely in partnership with USGS and NASA). 

You can sign a Change.org petition calling for an full re-assessment of the Boston Basin's geology here: Petition: A Formal Reassessment of the Geology of the Boston Basin

The petition names the City of Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Harvard University, Boston University and Boston Medical Center, E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co., Procter & Gamble-Gillette, and organized crime entities operating through condominium associations at the Site (long story; go read the complaint if you have questions). The full list and the basis for each party's liability is in the petition but its just a starting point and the government has a year to investigate themselves before I'd have to take action. 

The petition requests that the EPA conduct a mandatory preliminary assessment for NPL listing, with cross-agency coordination with the Army Corps of Engineers and ATSDR. If the South Bay is not on the NPL and actively being restored to a functional marine ecosystem within one year, I intend to file a citizen suit in federal court and have a judge order them to clean up their mess.

The full CERCLA petition is available below and at DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18634019.
​
You can sign a Change.org petition supporting the CERCLA complaint here: The South Bay Needs a Superfund Investigation

I didn't want to have to write any of this. I only moved to Boston for a job - the only job offer I could get after Apple fired me. I ended up in a basement full of hydrothermal vent bacteria, teaching myself BLAST, publishing fifteen papers on evolutionary biology, and piecing together the geological history of a 12,900-year-old impact event from boring logs that nobody had ever assembled — all while litigating against Apple, navigating bankruptcy, and trying to get someone, anyone, in the City of Boston to care that I couldn't breathe in my own apartment.

What I found is that, generally, the City of Boston has been a stupid little brat about its environmental obligations for approximately two-hundred years. It filled a bay with garbage, burned radioactive dogs over the neighborhood, ran an open cesspool for a century, burned the city's trash while releasing the garbage fumes unabated and covering the neighborhood and bay with "black rain," sealed the evidence under even more garbage, removed it all from the records, renamed it so you can't find it, got the Commonwealth to invent a ("historic fill") legal exemption so you can't make them clean it, and is currently building luxury housing on top of it. When someone got hurt (when I got hurt) the City's hospital now run by Boston University refused to treat me and helped bankrupt me, and the City's code enforcement told me to shut my mouth about it. 

There have never been any NPL sites in the City of Boston.

That changed today.

Now, back to Apple. 

-Ashley 

​My CERCLA petition documents a systematic pattern of concealment by the City and the Commonwealth. The Roxbury Canal was removed from the City's own records. Geographic features were renamed (for example, a portion of the Roxbury canal was given the same name as a river in another city, "Bass River") so that searches for these sites would return incomplete and misleading results. The Commonwealth's wetland maps omit the Site. The Commonwealth claims there are no natural resources at the Site. Boston's landfills, dumps, and waste management facilities at the Site are unreported. The Commonwealth invented a "historic fill" legal exemption and applied it dozens of times at the Site to immunize itself from the federal environmental laws these actions violate.
​
The City operated a municipal incinerator for over 25 years without air emission controls, creating "black rain" that fell across the South End. It refused to stop even after the EPA and the courts ordered it shut down. The incinerator ash (containing pollution like heavy metals, dioxins, and furans) was used as "fill" material for the development of buildings, including residential. This is the same ground where people now live. And Boston is currently building dense residential housing on top of all of it, again, with no mitigation and no disclosures.
​

Download a PDF of the complaint here: 

View a txt-only version here. 

View the case schedule here or linked below. 

​View the case docket here.

The Jury Trial is scheduled for five-days and will be in person in San Francisco. 

It's happening!
​
-Ashley ​

View the creek aerial photo album on Flickr here.

2016 CALIFORNIA DTSC CONSENT AGREEMENT 

In 2016, Apple entered a hazardous waste Consent Agreement with the California EPA over hazardous waste violations at two different Apple facilities in Cupertino and Sunnyvale. The agreement was for at least five years and covered all Apple hazardous waste activities in California. The agreement similarly found that Apple was violating hazardous waste laws under both federal and state laws including many of the same issues at 3250 Scott Blvd including operating without required permits, failing to properly label and mark hazardous waste, and unlawfully transporting hazardous waste without required manifests or records (including unlawfully exporting hazardous waste to other countries). DTSC fined Apple $450,000. 

View the 2016 Complaint, Settlement Agreement, and Announcement. In 2016, Apple's environmental team told Reuters that "This matter involves an oversight in filing paperwork... We've worked... to ensure that going forward we have the proper permits for our current site. As we do with all our facilities, we followed our stringent set of health and safety standards, which go well beyond legal requirements." (See, California EPA says settled with Apple on hazardous waste claims). The Consent Agreement could only be terminated if Apple demonstrated compliance with hazardous waste laws at all of its facilities. At the time Apple was able to obtain a termination of the agreement in 2020, Apple was admittedly in violation of federal hazardous waste laws at 3250 Scott Blvd. If the 2017-2025 RCRA violations had been identified and reported, those violations likely would have prevented the termination of the 2016-2020 California EPA Consent Agreement. 

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or requests for information.

​-Ashley ​

In Santa Clara County in the 1970s and 1980s, the County (including City of Santa Clara) became ground zero for semiconductor manufacturing disasters. Reckless industrial practices led to toxic waste dumps, groundwater contamination, chemical spills, deaths, evacuations, and toxic clouds. The result: Santa Clara County ended up with the most Superfund cleanup sites in the nation.

Congress looked at what happened in Santa Clara County and enacted the federal environmental laws at issue in this case. RCRA, CERCLA, CAA, CWA, and EPCRA exist largely because of what happened here. Local regulations created in response to Santa Clara County disasters—like the Toxic Gas Ordinance and silane-specific safety regulations—were later adopted nationally in the International Fire Code.

The semiconductor fabrication facility at 3250 Scott Boulevard uses some of the most dangerous chemicals in industrial manufacturing including arsine, phosphine, mercury, silane, and extensive industrial solvents while sitting extraordinarily close to residential housing. The facility is also adjacent to two city-owned parks: Meadow Park and Creekside Park. Both parks are advertised on the city's website and feature playgrounds, BBQ facilities, and fitness equipment. The city invites the public to use these parks.

The city knows these specific chemicals have caused deaths and mass casualties. The city knows the community has fought for decades against locating these facilities near homes. The city cannot claim ignorance or good faith.

In 2023 and 2024, the EPA conducted inspections and found RCRA violations at the facility. According to EPA records, the facility reported releasing 16,083 pounds of air pollutants annually and its currently facing multiple air pollution violations from the Bay Area Air Quality Mgmt District. Beginning in at least 2020, multiple residents filed complaints with the city about chemical exposure. The city did nothing.

The City of Santa Clara voluntarily became a Certified Unified Program Agency (CUPA). This means the city demanded exclusive control over enforcement of federal hazardous waste laws at the local level. Only three cities in Santa Clara County chose to take on this responsibility. The city positioned itself as the local enforcer of RCRA, CAA, CWA, and EPCRA.

According to the city's own 2025 Operating Budget, Santa Clara employs just 3.95 full-time equivalent employees for CUPA administration and enforcement for the entire city. The budget reveals the city's enforcement priorities:

• CUPA enforcement penalties issued: $9,087 (FY23-24)
• Other environmental penalties: $6,590 (FY23-24)
• Bingo enforcement fines: $25,984 (FY23-24)

The city's total annual fines for violations of federal environmental laws amount to roughly 35% of what the city collects from Bingo gaming violations.

Between 2015 and 2017, the city approved the development of over 2,000 residential units at the Santa Clara Square Apartments location. During this approval process, the city kept the semiconductor facility's operations out of the Environmental Impact Report. The city never disclosed to future residents what was next door. This violated the city's own General Plan, which requires restricting "the use and storage of hazardous materials for industrial uses within 500 feet of existing residential uses."

When residents began experiencing chemical exposure, the city concealed information. In 2020 and 2021, I and other residents filed complaints with the city. I spoke directly with the Mayor Lisa Gillmor and Gary Welling, the Water and Sewer Director, about the chemical exposure. Other victims of chemical exposure also contacted both of them. The city did nothing, disclosed nothing, and stopped nothing.

Instead, the city concealed ongoing violations rather than reporting them to CalOES or EPA as required. The city refused Public Records Act requests. The city may have even tipped off the facility about an unannounced EPA inspection—which would constitute a federal crime. In response to my Public Records Act request, the city stated it has no documentation of ever enforcing the Toxic Gas Ordinance—an ordinance created specifically to prevent catastrophic disasters at facilities exactly like 3250 Scott Boulevard.