MY RETALIATION, TOXIC TORT, & CIVIL RIGHTS LAWSUIT AGAINST APPLE WILL NOW PROCEED TO THE NINTH CIRCUIT

Today, June 24, 2026, the federal district court in Gjovik v. Apple Inc., No. 3:23-cv-04597, denied my Motion for Summary Judgement against Apple, and granted Apple's cross-motion for Summary Judgment. The court's order rests on findings that the record in this case — including Apple's own sworn corporate testimony, Apple's own filings, depositions of Apple's witnesses, and Apple's own internal documents — directly contradicts. The Ninth Circuit reviews summary judgment grants de novo. Today's order will be appealed, along with several prior orders/decisions in this case, and I expect to prevail. ​Fifteen days apart, the same judge ruled two opposite ways.

On June 9, 2026, the federal judge in my retaliation case denied my motion to compel Apple's privileged communications. He gave a reason. Apple, the order said, "is not claiming as a defense that it made the decision to terminate Ms. Gjovik because counsel so advised. . . . Apple has not indicated that it will argue to the trier of fact (or the Court) that its decision to terminate was informed by communications from counsel." So I could not have the documents. That was Dkt. 386.
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Fifteen days later, the same court granted Apple summary judgment. Apple's legitimate-reason defense — the basis Apple has given for terminating me — is that the information I disclosed was confidential. That determination was made by one person inside Apple: Vice President Yannick Bertolus, who signed my termination. Bertolus testified at his deposition in this case, under oath, that his only knowledge of the underlying facts came from privileged communications with Apple counsel. (Bertolus Dep. 147:19–148:6.) He testified his preparation for the decision was "I only worked with the lawyers." (Bertolus Dep. 15:21–22.) He testified that he confirmed the confidentiality of the disclosed information through a morning-of-deposition consultation with another Apple witness in April 2026 — nearly five years after he signed my termination. (Bertolus Dep. 84:12–85:23.) He received the recommendation email at 6:20 PM on September 9, 2021. He approved my termination at 6:26 PM.

Six minutes. No facts of his own. No independent investigation. The decisionmaker's belief had one foundation, and it was exactly what the court had told me, fifteen days earlier, Apple would not be using in this case.

Either Apple is using privileged communications to defend this termination — in which case I was entitled to the discovery the court denied me, and the discovery ruling has to go. Or Apple isn't — in which case Bertolus's confidentiality determination has no decisionmaker-level foundation, and the summary judgment ruling has to go. Both rulings cannot stand together. The two orders are visible on the docket fifteen days apart. 

The court accepted Apple's positions that Apple's own corporate witness disclaimed under oath.

A corporation is bound by what its designated corporate representative testifies to under Federal Rule 30(b)(6). The testimony is the corporation speaking. Sanders v. Union Pacific R.R., 154 F.3d 1037 (9th Cir. 1998). Whatever the corporation's lawyers wrote in their filings, the deposition controls.

Apple's 30(b)(6) representative, Senior Director of Employee Relations Adelmise Warner, sat for deposition on May 12, 2026 — six weeks past the discovery cutoff Apple was supposed to meet. The magistrate judge described Apple's posture leading up to that deposition as "unreasonable" and said Apple "should know better." (Dkt. 357 at 1–2.) When Warner testified, she undid the foundation of much of Apple's case.

For five years, Apple identified my August 28, 2021 Twitter post about an ear-scan user study as a reason it fired me. Apple's outside counsel cited it in his September 15, 2021 letter to me. Apple's verified March 4, 2022 position statement to the U.S. Department of Labor cited it. Apple's August 4, 2025 verified interrogatory response cited it. Warner testified on May 12, 2026 that the ear-scan tweet was not a basis for my termination, and the information was not confidential. (Warner Dep. 209:1–224:25.) Today's order reproduces the tweet at page 4 and treats it as a confidential product disclosure.

Apple's HR Director Megan Bowman wrote the September 9, 2021 email recommending my termination. In it, she said I had been "actively redacting relevant information from documents that she presented to Apple's [Employee Relations] investigator." That assertion appears in today's order, accepted as part of the legitimate basis for my firing. Warner could not defend it. Asked what I had allegedly redacted, she could not say. Asked what specific text contradicted what, she could not say. Apple's counsel called a lunch break, specifically, to prepare Warner to answer. After the break, she still could not identify any specific text or any specific contradiction. (Warner Dep. 153:24–25; 154:25–155:5; 155:17–156:7; 156:8–10; 187:25–188:5.)

Apple's Seventh Affirmative Defense pleads The Verge's August 30, 2021 article on Apple's workplace surveillance — the article that names me — as "after-acquired evidence" Apple learned of "shortly after" my termination. Warner testified the Verge article was already a pre-termination basis for firing me, sitting beside my Twitter posts: "That was part of the reasons for your termination because there was — it came to our attention that you had posted, again, the images, which, again, we can look at them, on Twitter, and you also had 'The Verge' article." (Warner Dep. 79:14–22; 81:18–22.) Apple's counsel admitted on the record: "I have not seen anything that says that Apple did not know about 'The Verge' article." (Warner Dep. 83:3–4.) The same document cannot be both a pre-termination basis and an after-acquired one. Today's order treats it as a pre-termination basis and never addresses the contradictory pleading.

Bertolus signed off on a "misleading complaint" finding against me without knowing whose conduct the complaint was about. He testified at deposition that he thought my harassment complaint was about his close personal friend, the head chef of the Michelin-starred restaurant where the underlying conduct happened — not about the sous chef the complaint was actually about. He had, in his own words, "absolutely no idea." (Bertolus Dep. 164:11–17.) Apple was asked, through Warner, whether that confusion would have changed the decision. Warner said it would not have. (Warner Dep. 243.) On Apple's own binding testimony, the actual facts of my harassment complaint were immaterial to my firing. Under California Labor Code § 1102.6, Apple bears the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that it would have taken the same action absent the protected activity. Apple's witness has admitted, on the record, that nothing about the underlying conduct mattered. Today's order awards Apple the same-decision defense as a matter of law anyway.

The same Apple investigation that produced the "misleading complaint" finding against me also produced corrective-action feedback to the supervisor I had complained about, Dan West — for the same conduct that was the subject of my complaint. Warner testified to this under oath. (Warner Dep. 148:1–11.) The order applies Joaquin v. City of Los Angeles, 202 Cal. App. 4th 1207 (2012) — which permits discipline only where the employer holds a good-faith belief that the employee's harassment charges were false. An employer that disciplines the subject of a complaint for the conduct it complained about cannot, in good faith, believe the complaint about that conduct was false.

Warner was asked which specific photographs I had disclosed that Apple believed were confidential. She could identify "at least one." She could not say which. (Warner Dep. 52:17–22; 52:24–53:13; 55:6–10.) Apple's binding witness on this case cannot identify the subject matter of the confidentiality designation that allegedly justified my termination.

Every one of these is in deposition transcripts taken in this case, in May and April 2026. The order does not acknowledge the disavowals. It treats Apple's filings as if Warner and Bertolus had never spoken.

"No evidence" of facts that are in Apple's own documents.

The order repeatedly uses the phrase "no evidence" to dispose of disputed factual questions. Most of those questions have evidence — including in Apple's own filings.

Apple's pre-termination knowledge of my filings with the EEOC, the DFEH, the U.S. Department of Labor, the California Department of Industrial Relations, the SEC, the FBI, and the DOJ Civil Rights Division? The order says, at pages 4, 5, 7, 14, and 28: "no evidence." I posted about each of those filings on Twitter, publicly, before my termination. Apple's own March 4, 2022 verified position statement to the U.S. Department of Labor admits that Apple was monitoring my Twitter from August 28 through September 9, 2021. Either Apple was watching, as it told the federal government, or it was not. The court resolved that question by finding "no evidence."

Internal Apple comments suggesting any decisionmaker was upset about my complaints? The order at page 28 says: "no evidence." Twelve days after my firing, Apple CEO Tim Cook sent an all-company email saying: "People who leak confidential information do not belong here." The NLRB issued a formal Decision of Merit on that email, finding it violated federal labor law. The order does not mention it. The order also does not mention Apple HR Director Antonio Lagares telling me, in mid-July 2021, that it was "annoying" to Apple when employees "figure that out" — meaning labor laws. It does not mention Dan West telling me, in April 2021, that I was "kicking a hornet's nest." It does not mention West asking me to move environmental-exposure communications off his work email to his personal Gmail because his work email was "routinely scanned for lawsuits."
Bertolus's knowledge of my agency complaints? Footnote 16, on page 12 of the order, says "no evidence." Bertolus testified at his April 2026 deposition that he was aware of my EHS complaints and my complaints to the EPA. The order quotes his declaration's denial and ignores his contradicting deposition testimony from this case.

Any written statement from me to Apple that I did not believe the disclosed information was confidential? The order at page 28 says I "never even" made such a claim. My September 9, 2021 emails to Apple Global Security investigator Aleks Kagramanov are in the record and address the confidentiality question directly. My response to Apple outside counsel David Eberhart's September 15, 2021 letter is in the record, explicitly states that the information was not confidential, and addresses my right to discuss working conditions under federal labor law.

A federal court that says "no evidence" of facts the moving party itself has documented in its own filings is not applying the summary judgment standard. It is making findings of fact, against the non-movant, in conflict with the record.

A federal agency's merit finding on my specific firing was "not consequential"

The NLRB issued five Decisions of Merit in this matter. One of them, in October 2024, in Cases 32-CA-282142 and 32-CA-283161, specifically found that Apple's August 4, 2021 placement of me on administrative leave AND Apple's September 9, 2021 termination of my employment violated federal labor law. The leave and the termination at issue in this case. After investigation. By the federal agency Congress charged with enforcing the National Labor Relations Act.

The order, on pages 14 to 15, says: "The NLRB matter in 2024-2025 is not consequential to the issues addressed herein." The August 4 leave I asked for, the laptop evidence that was "sheer speculation," the upload question that was "not material."

The order says, at page 22, that I asked to be placed on administrative leave on August 4, 2021. The phrase used is "undisputed evidence." On August 4, 2021, I posted publicly on Twitter: "I am now on indefinite paid administrative leave per #Apple Employee Relations while they investigate my concerns." I filed an NLRB charge on August 26 characterizing the leave as adverse. I filed a U.S. Department of Labor whistleblower complaint on August 29 characterizing the leave as adverse. I filed a California DIR retaliation complaint on August 29 characterizing the leave as adverse. The NLRB's October 2024 Decision of Merit found the leave unlawful — which it could not have been if it were voluntary. The court found it was something I asked for.

The order at page 22 also says my claim that Apple imposed the leave to prevent me from retrieving evidence the next day is "sheer speculation." My Issue Confirmation document, submitted to Apple on August 23, 2021, is in Apple's possession, was produced in Apple's discovery, and documents the plan in writing. The court called documented evidence in Apple's own files "sheer speculation."

Then there is footnote 22, on page 24, which addresses the deepest factual dispute in the case in one sentence: "Ms. Gjovik has suggested there are disputes about, e.g., whether the images were ever uploaded to Apple, but that issue is not material."

Apple's own Cross-Motion at Dkt. 367, footnote 1, admits: "none were actually in Apple's possession." Apple cannot hold a confidentiality interest in information it never possessed. The images were captured by Apple software on my personal device, of my own face. Whether they ever reached Apple is the foundation of any confidentiality theory. The court called it "not material."

There is also footnote 8, on page 5, which states that I signed an Informed Consent Form for the user study and never asked to be removed from it. The form Apple produced was electronically signed in 2017, for a different 20-minute session, over two years before the conduct at issue in this case. No 2021-specific consent form exists. The court treated a 2017 form for a brief unrelated session as covering the 2021 conduct.

The strike that produced the "undisputed" findings.

The court struck two of my reply/opposition declarations as untimely. The first, Dkt. 377, contained Apple's Rule 30(b)(6) deposition transcript. The deposition occurred on May 12, 2026. My opening summary judgment brief was due April 23, 2026. Apple delayed the deposition past the discovery cutoff, and the magistrate judge said as much. (Dkt. 357 at 1–2.) The court struck the transcript as untimely, without addressing that the testimony Apple had delayed past the discovery cutoff did not exist on the date the court said it should have been filed.

The order then uses the absence of the stricken evidence to find substantive facts undisputed. At page 25: "the Court does not consider this evidence because . . . it has stricken the evidence as untimely filed." At page 33, on the disparate-treatment question concerning Apple researcher Dr. Aloe's published articles on Face ID: same reasoning.

The Ninth Circuit, in Ahanchian v. Xenon Pictures, 624 F.3d 1253 (2010), and the en banc court in Pincay v. Andrews, 389 F.3d 853 (2004), and the Supreme Court in Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178 (1962), have all held what Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 1 says directly: federal cases should be decided on the merits. A federal court cannot strike the evidence as untimely and then use the absence of the stricken evidence to find facts undisputed against the non-movant. That is not how summary judgment works.

The discovery the court restricted, then dismissed for lack of.

The magistrate judge restricted my discovery into Apple's pre-termination knowledge of my environmental complaints. The district court affirmed those restrictions. Today's order dismisses my California Labor Code § 6310 environmental-safety retaliation claim on a finding that there is insufficient evidence of Apple's knowledge of those complaints — the very knowledge the restricted discovery was designed to develop.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway v. Assiniboine & Sioux Tribes, 323 F.3d 767, 773 (9th Cir. 2003), and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(d) both hold that summary judgment is improper where relevant evidence has been restricted in discovery. A court that blocks the discovery and then dismisses for the absence of the evidence it blocked has used a procedural ruling to determine a substantive outcome the merits do not support.

The controlling law the court did not apply.

The California Supreme Court held in Lawson v. PPG Architectural Finishes, Inc., 12 Cal. 5th 703 (2022), that California Labor Code § 1102.6 — not federal McDonnell Douglas pretext analysis — governs California Labor Code § 1102.5 retaliation claims. Section 1102.6 requires the plaintiff to show only that protected activity was a "contributing factor" to the adverse action; the employer then has to prove, by clear and convincing evidence, that it would have taken the same action absent the protected activity. The order cites Lawson and then imports a McDonnell Douglas "sole reason" finding into the § 1102.6 contributing-factor inquiry. (Order at 34.) The "sole reason" finding required resolving multiple factual disputes at summary judgment, against the non-movant.
The order reads California Labor Code § 232.5(d)'s "proprietary information" carve-out to allow an employer's unilateral confidentiality designation to defeat the whistleblower-protection framework wholesale — § 1102.5, Government Code § 12964.5, Civil Code § 1668, Labor Code § 96(k), and Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act. The order does not cite Doe v. Google, Inc., 54 Cal. App. 5th 948 (2020). It does not cite Killgore v. SpecPro Professional Services, LLC, 51 F.4th 973 (9th Cir. 2022). It does not cite Erhart v. BofI Holding, Inc., 387 F. Supp. 3d 1046 (S.D. Cal. 2019). Each of those decisions holds that employer confidentiality designations cannot override statutory whistleblower protections where the disclosures concern matters of public concern. If today's reading of § 232.5(d) stood, any California employer could disable the whistleblower-protection framework by stamping its misconduct "confidential."

The order rejects cat's-paw liability under a standard the Supreme Court overruled in Staub v. Proctor Hospital, 562 U.S. 411 (2011). Staub holds an employer liable when biased actors influence the formal decisionmaker — regardless of the formal decisionmaker's individual knowledge of the protected activity. The order requires me to name a single biased subordinate, finds I have not, and stops there. The institutional cat's-paw structure in this case — Apple HR drafting the recommendation, Apple Legal supplying Bertolus's only foundation through privileged communications — is exactly what Staub reaches.

The order accepts Apple's reliance on Bertolus's privileged-communications-only confidentiality determination without addressing Wellpoint Health Networks v. Superior Court, 59 Cal. App. 4th 110 (1997). Wellpoint holds that an employer relying on the conclusions of an internal investigation as the basis for adverse action waives privilege over the substance of that investigation. The order does not cite Wellpoint at all.

What appellate review fixes.The Ninth Circuit reviews summary judgment grants de novo. The appellate panel will not defer to how the district court resolved factual disputes. It will not defer to the district court's reading of Lawson, or Doe v. Google, or Killgore, or Staub, or Wellpoint. It will apply the law to the record itself.

Today's central moves are each independently reversible. Treating Apple's contradicted positions as undisputed runs against the binding effect of Rule 30(b)(6) testimony. Finding "no evidence" of facts in Apple's own filings violates the basic standard of Rule 56. Calling a federal agency's merit determination on this specific termination "not consequential" misreads Federal Rule of Evidence 803(8). Excluding the deposition Apple delayed past the discovery cutoff, then using the absence to find facts undisputed, contradicts Foman, Ahanchian, and Pincay. Dismissing for "no evidence" of facts whose discovery the court restricted contradicts Burlington Northern and Rule 56(d). Misapplying Lawson, ignoring Doe v. Google, Killgore, and Erhart on § 232.5(d), applying the pre-Staub cat's-paw standard, and accepting Apple's defense against Wellpoint are pure legal errors reviewable freshly on appeal.

The contradiction between Dkt. 386 and Dkt. 389 is structural and visible on the docket. Fifteen days, the same judge, the same case, two opposite positions on whether Apple's defense depends on privileged communications. The Ninth Circuit panel reviewing this case will see it on the first read.

What workers should hear.If you are an Apple worker, or a tech worker, or any worker watching this to figure out whether the law actually protects you when you report misconduct: today's order does not say it does not. The protections are still in California Labor Code § 1102.5, § 6310, § 98.6, and § 232.5. They are in Government Code § 12964.5 and § 9414. They are in Civil Code § 1668. They are in Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act. The federal labor agency has ruled in my favor five times in this matter. The federal environmental agency has issued repeated adverse findings against Apple. The agencies the government maintains to investigate worker complaints have, when they have actually investigated, sided with the worker.

What today's order says is that a federal trial court can produce an order on a record like this one, and that the appellate process is exactly how the system corrects that. De novo review exists because the Supreme Court and Congress knew district courts can get summary judgment wrong. The case I built does not disappear because of today's ruling. Five years of depositions, agency findings, internal Apple documents, and binding 30(b)(6) testimony do not disappear. They go to the next court.

If you are deciding whether to speak up about something you have seen, build the record. Keep written copies. Save things to devices and accounts the company does not control. Talk to a lawyer before you do anything material. And do not let one trial-court order on one case persuade you the protections do not exist. They do. The agencies have used them. The appellate courts will use them.

What comes next.

Notice of appeal will be filed within the time the federal rules permit. Prior orders in this case — including the discovery-restriction orders that helped produce today's outcome — will be appealable as part of the final judgment.

I will be soliciting amicus briefs at the Ninth Circuit. The precedential questions on appeal — the § 232.5(d) "proprietary information" carve-out the trial court reads to swallow the whistleblower-protection framework, the Lawson/§ 1102.6 application, the worker protections for AI data protection disclosures, the institutional cat's-paw doctrine, and the Wellpoint framework applied to employer defenses built on privileged investigations — affect every California worker covered by these statutes. If your organization works on whistleblower protection, retaliation, occupational safety, worker privacy, or workplace surveillance, write me at [email protected]. The comprehensive appeal-strategy memo and the full catalog of trial-court findings contradicted by the case record are available to interested counsel.

A federal trial court is supposed to work from undisputed evidence. Where the evidence is disputed, it goes to the jury. Today's order does not meet that standard. It treats Apple's positions as undisputed where Apple's own corporate witness has disclaimed them. It says "no evidence" where the evidence is in Apple's own documents. It calls material disputes "not material" and federal merit findings "not consequential." It strikes evidence on technicalities and then uses the absence to find facts undisputed. It dismisses for lack of evidence the court itself restricted discovery on. And in its single sharpest move, it contradicts the same court's own ruling, fifteen days earlier, in the same case.

That ruling will be reviewed.

— Ashley M. Gjovik
Sacramento, California
June 25, 2026