In 2024, I filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleging that Northeastern University maintained workplace policies that violated federal labor law — specifically, that they were written broadly enough to chill employees' rights under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act: the right of workers to organize, act together, and speak up about their working conditions.

The NLRB investigated and it agreed: three of Northeastern's policies were overbroad and in violation of the Act. Rather than let the case proceed toward a complaint and trial, Northeastern amended all three policies by adding explicit language protecting workers' Section 7 rights.

• Media Relations (Policy 119) — Northeastern added language at the start of the policy making clear it does not apply to employees exercising their Section 7 rights (including talking to the media in their personal capacity about their terms and conditions of employment).
• Non-Solicitation and Sales (Policy 300) — Northeastern added that nothing in the policy is intended to prevent employees from soliciting support for a labor organization, including distributing labor-related materials during non-working time in non-working areas.
• Endorsements and Use of University Identifiers (Policy 116) — Northeastern added that nothing in the policy may be interpreted or applied to interfere with, restrain, or deny employees' Section 7 rights, including protected concerted activity for collective bargaining or other mutual aid and protection.

Overbroad workplace rules chill worker organizing even if they're not enforced. When employees read a policy that could be used to prevent them from talking to a reporter, handing a coworker a flyer, or organizing, many will simply stay quiet instead of accept the risk of discipline. Getting these carve-outs in writing means Northeastern's own policies now tell workers, in plain terms, that the university will not interfere with worker's federally protected labor rights.

The charge was formally dismissed — but the dismissal letter reads like a settlement. It documents what was unlawful and exactly how Northeastern came into compliance. That record is now public.

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

Statement of Ashley M. Gjøvik, Charging Party, NLRB Case 32-CA-282142

Five years ago, when I raised concerns about toxic chemical exposure in an Apple office, Apple's managers and "Employee Relations" told me — and by example, told every Apple employee — to stay quiet. Today, Apple has signed a federal settlement agreement with the National Labor Relations Board promising, in writing, that it will never do that again.

Under the settlement, Apple must post and email a federal Notice to Employees stating — in Apple's own signed words — that:

• WE WILL NOT tell you not to speak with others about your working conditions, including your workplace environmental health and safety concerns.
• WE WILL NOT tell you to use a "balancing test" — to make sure information is complete and accurate, doesn't cause panic, and makes no assessment about safety — before you talk to coworkers about health and safety.
• WE WILL NOT tell you to come to us first before communicating your health and safety concerns to others.
• WE WILL NOT direct you to refrain from talking with other employees while you are on administrative leave.
• WE WILL NOT impliedly threaten you with discipline for talking with other employees about working conditions.

Read that list again. Every line corresponds to something Apple actually did in 2021 — by phone, by email, by video call — according to the federal complaint the NLRB's own prosecutors issued after a multi-year investigation. In 2021, Apple told a worker that talking about workplace safety was a "warning." In 2026, the federal government made Apple put the opposite in writing.

This is Apple's second NLRB settlement arising from my charges. In 2025, Apple was required to rescind unlawful confidentiality and employment policies nationwide (Case 32-CA-284428). Together, these settlements establish, on the public record, what Apple workers have always known and what Apple spent years denying: you have the legal right to talk to each other — about pay, about safety, about working conditions, about your leave, about your workplace — and no NDA, no policy, no manager, and no "Employee Relations" script can lawfully take that from you.

To every Apple employee who was told to stay quiet, who watched what happened to those of us who spoke up, and who thought twice before posting in that Slack channel: this Notice is for you. I signed the settlement — but I also filed a formal Statement with the NLRB, because this settlement does not go nearly far enough.

The case was gutted before it was settled. In September 2025, the NLRB withdrew the heart of the complaint — my unlawful suspension and termination — along with reinstatement, backpay, an apology, expungement, and mandatory training for Apple's managers. My appeal was denied this May purely on "prosecutorial discretion" grounds, with no ruling on the merits. My objections to that gutting are now incorporated into the settlement record.

One bulletin board is not a remedy. Apple's violations were committed by phone, email, and video, against remote employees, and were reported around the world. The settlement requires a paper posting next to a locker room in one building in Sunnyvale, plus an email to one team. The NLRB's own 2024 complaint demanded posting at all Apple facilities and on Slack, intranet, and email, plus training. The prior settlement in my other case was nationwide. I've asked the NLRB to explain why workers this time get a notice most affected employees will never see — and to require nationwide electronic posting or a reading of the Notice by a senior Apple executive.

Apple is a repeat offender. Federal settlement standards require considering a company's history of labor violations. Apple's recent record — the nationwide policy settlement, retail store cases, and multiple charges from other employees over the same 2021 events — should have produced a stronger remedy, not one of the lightest the agency offers.

The NLRB's General Counsel used to be Apple's defense lawyer — on this exact case. The current General Counsel of the NLRB, Crystal Carey, appeared as counsel of record for Apple, in this case, while at Morgan Lewis — her name is on the government's own service list from December 2024. She now runs the office with final, unreviewable authority over the case, and the office that would hear any appeal. I have formally asked the NLRB to disclose, on the record, whether she is recused, who actually made the decisions to shrink this case and approve this settlement, and how future compliance decisions will be walled off from the conflict. Workers are entitled to know whether the referee used to play for the other team — because in this case, she literally did.

I signed because Apple workers deserve this Notice now; not after more years of litigation. But make no mistake: a company worth trillions of dollars violated federal labor law, admitted nothing, and was asked for a piece of paper and an email. My civil case and Department of Labor proceedings continue, fully preserved. The evidence the government gathered remains available. And every Apple employee now has a signed federal document to point to the next time anyone at Apple suggests they should stay quiet.

The settlement agreement, Notice to Employees, complaints, and my filed Statement are available below.

- Ashley Gjovik 

Today I e-filed a consolidated position statement and umbrella memorandum with the National Labor Relations Board, Region 32, in support of all ten of my pending unfair labor practice charges against Apple Inc. (Case Nos. 32-CA-381277, -381430, -381499, -381754, -381967, -382501, -382742, -383738, -384065, and -384770). The filing consolidates what has, until now, been told in ten separate charge cover letters into a single account — because it was always a single course of conduct.

In April 2025, Apple signed a national settlement agreement with the NLRB (Case 32-CA-284428). In it, Apple promised to rescind and stop enforcing the overbroad confidentiality rules it had used against employees — including me — to the extent those rules covered wages, hours, and working conditions. The settlement includes a self-executing default provision: if Apple violates it and doesn't cure within fourteen days of notice, the original complaint is reissued, Apple's answer is deemed withdrawn, every allegation is deemed admitted, and the Board can enter a full remedy without a trial.

Within months of signing, Apple rebuilt the same restrictions through a different vehicle: the confidentiality-designation mechanism of a protective order in my civil retaliation lawsuit. At my December 2025 deposition, the moment I invoked the NLRB settlement on the record, Apple's counsel declared everything I said going forward "confidential" — ultimately about 72% of my testimony about my own working conditions and my own complaints.

What followed, between February and April 2026, was a coordinated enforcement campaign by three of Apple's outside law firms across three federal forums: demands that I delete published posts and commit to future silence; a letter banning me from every Apple property on Earth, forever (walked back to a single address one day after I filed a charge about it); motions seeking sanctions, gag orders, and the sealing of my NLRB charges from the public docket; and threats of sanctions and pre-filing restrictions in my own Chapter 7 bankruptcy case — with my NLRB charges expressly listed, by name, as the supposedly "vexatious" conduct justifying it all.

Then the district court ratified the mechanism. In June 2026, it granted Apple's motion to retain its confidentiality designations, kept seventeen entire docket entries under seal — including my NLRB charges and the NLRB settlement agreement itself — and ordered me to "de-publish" my own already-published speech about my own working conditions, along with "all other publications and republications of that same material." In July, the district judge personally ordered my compliance. And in August, Apple took the position that the orders are now final and unreviewable: the district court supposedly can't revisit them because they're on appeal, Apple "reserves its right to object" to the Ninth Circuit reviewing them, and my request that Apple state the factual and legal basis for each individual redaction is, in Apple's words, impermissible "relitigation." Apple alone decides what is secret, and no tribunal may ask why.

The NLRB does not answer to the district court on questions of federal labor law — it's the other way around. Under San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, whether an employer may restrict employee speech about working conditions, and whether it may retaliate against an employee for filing Board charges, are questions committed exclusively to the Board. The district court never applied the National Labor Relations Act; it applied Rule 26(c), a discovery rule. Board decisions are reviewed by the federal courts of appeals — not by district-court discovery orders.
​
And under Bill Johnson's Restaurants v. NLRB and BE&K Construction v. NLRB, an employer's litigation loses any petitioning protection when it pursues an objective that is illegal under federal law — enforcing restrictions a Board settlement rescinded, punishing an employee for filing charges, imposing gag terms the Board has held unlawful even to propose, sealing Board charges from public view, and disabling an employee's ability to participate in Board proceedings. That exception applies regardless of whether the employer wins in court. No judicial success can launder an unlawful objective. So Apple's court victories are not a defense to these charges. They are the evidence — the measure of how far the mechanism got before anyone with jurisdiction over the labor question weighed in.

The filing asks Region 32 to:

• Invoke the settlement's default provision — issue the fourteen-day non-compliance notice, and if Apple doesn't cure, reissue the October 2024 complaint with all allegations deemed admitted, as Apple agreed in writing;
• Issue a consolidated complaint on all ten charges;
• Seek a Section 10(j) injunction so that Apple cannot keep enforcing the designations, deletion demands, and sealing positions against my protected activity — or my ability to give evidence to the Board — while the case is decided;
• Order the remedies the Board imposed in Pain Relief Centers: withdrawal of every litigation position with a preempted or unlawful objective, and reimbursement of the costs of defending against them; and
• Order rescission and notice — including notifying the district court and the Ninth Circuit that the designations and related orders were procured and enforced in violation of the Act and the settlement.

If this mechanism stands, every NLRB settlement in the country is optional. Any employer can sign one, then obtain a protective order in any lawsuit with any employee, designate the employee's testimony about her working conditions as "confidential," treat her Board charges as violations of that designation, get the charges sealed, get her speech deleted, and then administer the whole regime from behind a wall of "finality" that it claims no court can look past. The confidentiality rules the Board ordered rescinded come back — this time backed by the contempt power of a federal court.

The Supreme Court said in Nash v. Florida Industrial Commission that Congress wants people with information about unfair labor practices to be "completely free from coercion against reporting them to the Board." That principle either means something or it doesn't. This filing asks the Board to say it does.

My appeals are pending in the Ninth Circuit: one from the June 2026 judgment, and a second (No. 26-5331) from the confidentiality, sealing, and de-publication orders, with my opening brief due November 6, 2026. The Board's process runs independently of both — which is exactly the point. Nearly a year will have passed between the deposition gag and the first appellate briefing. The Board doesn't have to wait, and its own settlement gives it a remedy that requires no new trial at all.
​
The full consolidated position statement is available below.

- Ashley Gjovik 

Case update: Gjovik v. Apple Inc., N.D. Cal. No. 3:23-cv-04597-EMC; Ninth Circuit appeals pending. Everything discussed below comes from the public docket, which you can read for yourself on CourtListener. The views here are mine — I'm the plaintiff, and these are some of the arguments I am making on appeal.
​
The district court case ended with a judgment on June 24, 2026 (Dkt. 390), which is now on appeal to the Ninth Circuit. But a second dispute — about secrecy itself — kept going after the judgment, and it has now produced its own appeal (Ninth Circuit No. 26-5331). That dispute is about whether hundreds of pages of my court filings, largely describing my complaints about my working conditions at Apple, can be sealed from public view, and whether I can be ordered to "de-publish" my own speech about my own case.

Here's the short version of how we got here, all from the public docket:

• In early 2026, Apple moved to seal roughly twenty of the filings in the case — including oppositions, declarations, and even a Request for Judicial Notice consisting of public records (Dkt. 340). The documents were sealed in their entirety, provisionally, in April (Dkt. 355).
• After the case was already over, a magistrate judge granted Apple's motion to keep its confidentiality designations (Dkt. 396, June 29, 2026). That order also directed that the previously sealed filings "remain sealed," and ordered me to "de-publish" material.
• The order's entire description of what is actually confidential is a single category: my deposition testimony about Apple's "internal code words and descriptions of internal product-related studies." (Dkt. 396 at 6.) It does not identify which portions of which documents contain that information.
• The district judge declined to disturb that ruling (Dkt. 398, July 16, 2026) — but, notably, ordered the parties to meet and confer about applying "limited redactions" to the sealed filings, because even Apple had told the court that entire documents should not stay sealed.
• I appealed. Twice, protectively, to make sure nothing slipped through a procedural crack (Dkt. 399, Dkt. 403).

So as of today the filings remain 100% sealed, months after a court acknowledged only "limited redactions" were warranted, and the question of what the public gets to see is being worked out — if you can call it that — in a "meet and confer" process between me and the company that wanted the secrecy in the first place.

Follow the sequence, because each step is stranger than the last.

Step one: seal first, specify never. Sealing a court record is supposed to work in exactly one order of operations. The party who wants secrecy identifies the specific content, explains with particularity why each piece meets the demanding legal standard, and the court makes specific findings before anything is sealed. That's not my preference — it's the Ninth Circuit's rule and this district's own Local Rule 79-5, which requires sealing requests to be "narrowly tailored" to sealable material, identified item by item. Here, entire documents were sealed wholesale, and the operative order defines the confidential content only as a one-sentence category.

Step two: the company that demanded secrecy can't find it. When the court ordered the "limited redactions" process, Apple — the party that filed the sealing motions, supported by sworn declarations — reported that it needed weeks to conduct a "careful and diligent review of nearly 1,000 pages" to locate the confidential information. Sit with that. The confidential content that justified sealing a thousand pages was, by Apple's own account, so hard to find that Apple itself needed a month-long expedition to locate it — months after it swore the documents warranted sealing.

Step three: the redactions arrive with no explanations. What Apple eventually produced was a set of highlighted pages. No index. No indication of which highlights quote the designated testimony and which are "indirect references" (Apple's phrase). No explanation of how any particular highlight falls within the one-sentence category. When I asked for a per-redaction basis — the kind of itemized chart this district ordinarily requires for any sealing request — Apple refused, and told me the burden was on me to identify each redaction I disputed and justify my disagreement, after which, in Apple's own words, "Apple will then consider your response before making a final decision about whether to retain or remove the redaction."

Read that again. In a dispute about the public's right of access to court records, the party seeking secrecy has appointed itself the final decision-maker.

Step four: no court will say who decides. Meanwhile, the jurisdictional picture is a hall of mirrors. Apple's position, filed publicly (Dkt. 406), is that the district court retains jurisdiction to "supervise" the filing of redacted versions — but cannot actually adjudicate anything about the redactions, because the orders are on appeal. The district court's latest order (Dkt. 407) sets a deadline for the meet and confer and says disagreements should go to the magistrate judge — while noting that whether the magistrate or the district judge would even have jurisdiction over such a dispute "may turn on the specifics of the issue." So: the redactions must be worked out now; the court that issued the orders won't construe them; the party that benefits from secrecy claims final decision authority; and the question of which judge could review any of it is expressly unresolved.

The result is a system with no adult in the room — except the one with the trillion-dollar market cap. My position, stated to Apple in writing, is simple: I am not the arbiter of Apple's redactions and I will not pretend to be. The burden of justifying secrecy belongs to Apple at every stage. Apple can file whatever redacted versions it believes it can justify, those choices will be Apple's alone, and the Ninth Circuit can review what this process actually produced.

The appeal isn't about hurt feelings over process. The orders are wrong under multiple independent bodies of law, any one of which requires reversal.

The public-access doctrine. Court records are the public's records. Under Kamakana v. City & County of Honolulu, 447 F.3d 1172 (9th Cir. 2006), sealing anything more than tangentially related to the merits requires "compelling reasons supported by specific factual findings" — and conclusory assertions of harm don't count. Foltz v. State Farm, 331 F.3d 1122 (9th Cir. 2003), requires a particularized showing as to specific documents; blanket designations under a stipulated protective order prove nothing. An order that seals a thousand pages in their entirety on the strength of a one-sentence category, with no document-specific findings, inverts every element of this doctrine. The months-long fight over what the order even covers is itself the proof: an order that complied with Kamakana would have answered that question on its face.

Improper delegation of a judicial function. Deciding what the public may see in a court file is a judicial act requiring judicial findings. What has happened here instead is that the court issued a category and left the interested corporate party to determine, unilaterally and after the fact, what the order sealed — with Apple declaring in writing that it will make the "final decision" on each redaction. Whatever else that is, it is not an Article III court administering the public's right of access. The redacted documents that eventually appear on the docket will have been scoped entirely by the party that sought the secrecy, with no judicial review of a single specific redaction. That structural defect infects every redaction regardless of its content.

Prior restraint. The order doesn't just seal documents — it commands me to "de-publish" material I already published about my own case. An injunction forbidding and unwinding speech is a prior restraint, which comes to any court "bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity." Prior restraints are the most disfavored remedy in American law, tolerated only in the most extraordinary circumstances, on the most specific findings. There are no such findings here — there couldn't be, when the order doesn't even specify what content it reaches.

Labor law. The sealed filings are, at their core, an employee's complaints about her working conditions and her employer's conduct — the heartland of activity protected by Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act. And California has spoken directly to this: the Silenced No More Act (Code of Civil Procedure § 1001; Government Code § 12964.5) embodies the state's explicit public policy against instruments that restrict workers from discussing unlawful workplace conduct. Orders that operate to gag an employee-plaintiff's accounts of her workplace disputes sit in direct tension with both federal labor law and California's declared policy — a tension the orders never acknowledge, let alone resolve.

Public records cannot be secret. Among the sealed filings is a Request for Judicial Notice composed of public records. Information already in the public domain cannot satisfy any sealing standard, under any test, in any circuit. That entire documents of this character have now spent months under seal tells you everything about how much scrutiny the sealing requests actually received.
What happens nextOn my side: the district-court process is complete. I initiated the court-ordered meet and confer, pursued it for over a month, proposed a concrete protocol with deadlines, and asked Apple to state the basis for its redactions. Apple declined. I have stated my final position and reserved everything for appeal. Apple will file its redacted versions; whatever it chooses to black out, it chose alone.

Then it goes to the Ninth Circuit, where the opening brief in the sealing appeal is due this fall, and where the questions finally get asked in the right order: What, specifically, was found to be sealable? By whom? On what evidence? And who gave a litigant the power to decide what the public may read in a public court file?

I'll post the briefs when they're filed. The full docket, including every order discussed above, is public on CourtListener.

— Ashley M. Gjøvik

RESIDENTS AND ADVOCATES TO RALLY AT SANTA CLARA CITY HALL OVER APPLE’S SECRET CHIP FAB NEXT TO HOMES, PARKS, AND A CHILDREN’S SCHOOL

Press conference precedes City Council meeting; follows amended federal lawsuit seeking to shut down hazardous semiconductor plant at 3250 Scott Blvd, Santa Clara, California.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Community members, labor advocates, and environmental activists will hold a press conference and rally on Tuesday, August 18, outside Santa Clara City Hall (1500 Warburton Avenue), ahead of that evening’s City Council meeting, to demand the City stop protecting an unmarked, high-hazard semiconductor fabrication plant (“chip fab”) operated by Apple Inc. at 3250 Scott Boulevard — directly across the street from the 1,840-unit Santa Clara Square Apartments, public city parks, children’s playgrounds, a church and Whole Foods, and the San Tomas Aquino/Saratoga Creek.

WHO: Ashley Gjovik, former Apple senior engineering program manager, environmental whistleblower, and plaintiff in Gjovik v. Apple Inc., City of Santa Clara, et al.; community members; labor and environmental advocates.

WHAT: Press conference and rally regarding the federal environmental citizen suit seeking to shut down hazardous operations at the chip fab — followed by attendance and public comment at the Santa Clara City Council meeting.

WHEN: Tuesday, August 18, 2026. Press conference and rally at 6:00 PM; City Council meeting begins at 7:00 PM. Attendees are encouraged to arrive at 6:00 PM and stay through the Council meeting.

WHERE: Santa Clara City Hall, 1500 Warburton Avenue, Santa Clara, CA 95050 (rally outside; Council meeting in the Council Chambers).

CAN’T ATTEND IN PERSON? The Council meeting is a hybrid meeting — join and speak during public comment via Zoom:

• Zoom: https://santaclaraca.zoom.us/j/99706759306 (Meeting ID: 997-0675-9306)
• By phone: 1 (669) 900-6833
• Watch only: livestreamed on the City’s Facebook (facebook.com/cityofsantaclara) and YouTube (youtube.com/cityofsantaclara) channels

Supporters joining remotely are encouraged to sign on by 7:00 PM and speak during the public comment period. Full participation instructions: santaclaraca.gov > City Clerk’s Office > Watch and Participate in Public Meetings. (https://www.santaclaraca.gov/our-city/departments-a-f/city-clerk-s-office/city-council-meetings/watch-and-participate-in-public-meetings)

My public comment and public presentation slides. 

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.
​
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

On April 27, 2026, I filed a Motion for Preliminary Injunction in Gjovik v. Apple Inc., City of Santa Clara, Jenab et al., Case No. 25-cv-07360-PCP, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The hearing is set for June 4, 2026 at 10:00 AM, before Judge P. Casey Pitts in Courtroom 8 — 4th Floor, 280 South 1st Street, San Jose, CA. The hearing is open to the public.

The motion asks the Court to order all hazardous waste, hazardous materials, and toxic gases removed from Apple's semiconductor fabrication plant at 3250 Scott Boulevard within 30 days, to prohibit resumption of hazardous use during the case, and to prohibit the property owner from re-leasing the site to any operator for hazardous use above CalARP, RMP, or Toxic Gas Ordinance threshold quantities. Apple may continue to occupy the building for office or non-industrial use. The relief targets the chemicals — not the building.

The full filings:

• Motion for Preliminary Injunction
• Request for Judicial Notice
• Plaintiff Declaration with Exhibits
• Full docket on CourtListener

Since I served the sixty-day notice in June 2025 and filed my Opposition to the City's motion to dismiss in October 2025, the record has only gotten worse for the Defendants.

In October 2025, EPA issued a Consent Agreement and Final Order documenting seven RCRA counts. The underlying April 2024 EPA Inspection Report identified 19 Potential Violations — 14 of which were still outstanding when EPA issued its Notice of Violation. Six BAAQMD air-pollution violations remain Pending as of April 26, 2026 — sixteen months after BAAQMD cited them. Santa Clara County's post-Bhopal Toxic Gas Ordinance permitting regime, which exists specifically to prevent catastrophes at facilities like this one, has zero records for this site.

Apple's own sworn 2024 throughput report — signed under penalty of law by Apple's EHS Lead in February 2025 — confirms permit-cap exceedances of arsine at 84% over, phosphine at 61% over, and boron trichloride at 824% over.

In September 2025, I offered all three Defendants a comprehensive menu of stipulated interim mitigation — air and sewer monitoring with auto-shutoff alarms, public warning signage, basic operator-identification signage (the building bears no public sign identifying Apple as the operator), completion of unfiled hazardous-substance permits, independent professional-engineer assessments, monthly compliance reporting. None of it required admission of liability. All three Defendants refused every measure and offered no counter-proposal.

The engineers said it in writingThe most important document in the motion is Apple's own. In its September 2020 Process Hazard Analysis Revalidation, Apple's retained consultant identified specific failure modes — toxic gas leak, fire, explosion, sabotage, truck fire — and assigned to each consequence column the same phrase: "personnel exposure resulting in injury and/or fatality (site personnel or neighbors)." That phrase appears across at least eleven distinct nodes in the document, covering arsine, phosphine, chlorine, ammonia, diborane, silane, and the pyrophoric organometallics like trimethylaluminum and diethyl zinc — chemicals that ignite violently in air or water.

Apple's own RMP*Comp dispersion modeling places its arsine worst-case toxic endpoint at 1.1 miles. Inside that envelope: 5,343 residents (a number that excludes the apartment complex across the lot line, which Apple just left out of the count), 1,787 housing units, an amusement park, a college, places of worship, the San Tomas Aquino Creek Trail, VTA Light Rail, and Highway 101.

The Santa Clara Fire Department — the CalARP Administering Agency that received the modeling — has formally written that Apple's plume models are "not favorable for this area" and on June 17, 2025 withheld approval of an adjacent 166-unit residential project pending environmental review.

The Granada Islamic School, with up to 900 pre-K through 8th-grade students, sits inside the arsine plume. In a chemical emergency, the school's Shelter-in-Place plan directs the children to evacuate to Meadow Park — directly across the street from the facility. The evacuation route runs the children toward the source.

The failure modes Apple's engineers predicted have already materialized. Between June 2016 and May 2024, there were at least eleven toxic gas incidents at the facility, including:

• An April 2021 phosphine release that passed through the scrubbers and re-entered the lab via HVAC over 800 square feet (CalOES Reportable);
• An April 2022 fluorine release "evacuated to atmosphere as designed";
• A May 2022 hexafluorobutadiene release from primary and secondary cylinders simultaneously — both lines of defense failing at once;
• Worker chemical-exposure hospitalizations in August 2023 and May 2024.

Five chemical-release events in the past three years alone. Santa Clara has been withholding additional incident records since May 2024.

Apple's facility sits directly on top of a pressurized artesian aquifer at about 35 feet below grade. Documented head pressure has been increasing since 1988 — a Honeywell monitoring well next door went from 19 feet depth-to-water in 1988 to zero by 1995, with water rising 100 feet up the well shaft. The 2015 Geotechnical Investigation for the apartment site documented four pressurized springs with measured pressure sufficient to drive the water column 10 to 13 feet above grade if uncapped.

Apple stores silane, dichlorosilane, silicon tetrachloride, trimethylaluminum, diethyl zinc, and 49% hydrofluoric acid — chemicals that ignite or react violently with water — directly above this system. The geotechnical engineers' only mitigation recommendation was, essentially, don't dig down into it. Apple has known about the increasing aquifer pressure since 2015 and has done nothing.

The City has been here before. The Sixth District Court of Appeal held in LSI Logic Corp. v. City of Santa Clara (1995) that the City of Santa Clara was unlawfully negligent for approving sensitive receptors next to chip fabs, and rejected the City's "shelter-in-place safe room" mitigation as inadequate. Current Mayor Lisa Gillmor was on the City Council at the time. The City was on direct, judicially-noticeable notice — thirty years ago — that doing this in this very City violated the duty owed to the surrounding community. The City did it again here, concealed Apple's CalARP-regulated status from the 2015 EIR, and continues to conceal the danger.

Apple is also judicially estopped. In my prior personal-injury case before this same District (3:23-cv-04597), Apple won a statute-of-limitations dismissal on the position that, on notice that Apple was operating a semiconductor manufacturing plant at this address, I and any other victims should have immediately suspected the facility as the cause of severe chemical injuries. Apple cannot now turn around and tell this Court the same facility presents no extraordinary risk to anyone living next door. The fab is either ultrahazardous activity or it isn't.

What I'm asking forThe motion asks the Court for what the Defendants would not agree to voluntarily:

• Removal of all hazardous waste, hazardous materials, and toxic gases from 3250 Scott Boulevard within 30 days, with a sworn declaration from Apple's Director of EHS confirming the removal and attaching all manifests;
• No resumption of hazardous use during the pendency of the case;
• No re-leasing the property for hazardous use during the case;
• Suspension of pending residential rezoning applications within 1,000 feet of the facility (the SCFD has already withheld approval of the closest one);
• Warning signage at adjacent parks, playgrounds, and trail segments — and closure of those public areas if Apple and the property owner refuse compliance;
• A court-approved third-party safety auditor reporting quarterly on every still-outstanding EPA Potential Violation and every open PHA action item.

What comes nextI'll post updates here as briefing develops. Apple, the City, and the property owner have their oppositions due in the coming weeks; my reply follows.

If you want to support the case, you can sign the Change.org petition and share it. The community right next door has been kept in the dark about this for nearly a decade, and the people inside the 1.1-mile arsine plume — the residents, the children at the playground across the street, the 900 schoolkids whose evacuation route goes toward the source, the worshippers at the Family Prayer House nursery, the urgent care patients, the workers who have already been hospitalized — deserve to know.

The chemicals at this facility can kill thousands of people in minutes if released. Apple's own engineers admitted that in writing under penalty. It's time for the chemicals to come out.

​-Ashley 

On April 24, 2026, I filed my Motion for Summary Judgment and Preliminary Injunction in Gjovik v. Apple Inc., Case No. 3:23-cv-04597-EMC, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The hearing is set for June 11, 2026 at 1:30 PM before the Honorable Edward M. Chen in Courtroom 5, 17th Floor of the San Francisco Courthouse. The hearing is open to the public — come watch.

The full filings:

• Motion for Summary Judgment
• Plaintiff's Declaration in support
• Motion for Leave to File Past Deadline + Opposition to Apple's Strike Motion
• Declaration in support of Motion for Leave
• Full docket on CourtListener

(Quick refresher on what summary judgment is, since I walked through this back in January: the Court can decide substantive issues — or the whole case — before trial when there is no dispute of fact. That's usually because the parties agree on what happened, or because there's direct documentary evidence proving a fact. In retaliation cases, employers usually file these motions because they have most of the evidence and like to wrap things up before the employee can show the jury what really happened. This time, I'm the one filing.)

For the first time in this case — almost five years after firing me — Apple has now committed under oath, on a complete record, to a specific set of reasons for terminating my employment. There are three:

1. A Twitter post during nonworking hours complaining about Apple's culture of retaliation and surveillance of workers;
2. A repeated request that investigatory communications be in writing — made to preserve a record for my NLRB proceeding and other pending government complaints; and
3. My sexual harassment complaint against my senior director, which Apple now characterizes as "misleading."

Each one is itself conduct that California law expressly protects from retaliation. So the entire motion is one sentence: Apple fired me, told me three reasons, and each of those reasons is conduct that's protected as a matter of law.

Reason 3 is brand new — and Apple fought to keep it hidden for nearly five yearsThis is the part of the case I most want readers to understand, because it didn't happen the way I expected and it changes how I had to draft this motion.

For nearly five years, Apple referred vaguely to "inconsistencies" or a "misleading impression" Plaintiff had supposedly created during an internal investigation. Apple never said what the inconsistency was, what I had supposedly misrepresented, or how it bore on the termination decision. The September 9, 2021 termination email didn't say. The September 15, 2021 letter from Apple's outside counsel didn't say. Apple's March 2022 sworn DOL/OSHA position statement didn't say. Apple's August 2025 verified interrogatory responses didn't say. And — importantly — Apple's Amended Answer didn't say either. It used the same boilerplate it had used for years.

I tried repeatedly to make Apple identify what it was actually claiming. I filed motions to strike Apple's affirmative defenses. The Court ordered Apple to plead concrete factual allegations, observing in May 2025 that the supporting information was "at least in part, within [Apple's] possession, custody, or control." Apple's amended Answer continued to use boilerplate.

In July 2025 I served Special Interrogatories asking Apple to identify the complete factual basis of every stated termination reason and every affirmative defense. Apple refused to answer most of them. I filed a motion to compel in March 2026. Apple defended its prior non-responses as adequate. On March 30, 2026, Magistrate Judge Kandis A. Westmore rejected Apple's interrogatory-counting methodology, granted my motion, and ordered Apple to supplement. The same order observed that this case had produced "an unprecedented number of discovery disputes" expending "a considerable amount of the Court's limited judicial resources."

That is what it took to get Apple to disclose:

• April 6, 2026 — under court order, Apple's amended verified interrogatory response added a single new phrase to the boilerplate it had used for years. The "inconsistencies" Apple had referenced since 2021 included, Apple finally conceded, "an incident regarding a Sous Chef at a local restaurant." That phrase identified a topic — but not the substance, not what I was supposed to have misrepresented, not how any of it bore on a decision the Vice President had made nearly five years earlier.
• April 17, 2026 — at the deposition of Vice President Yannick Bertolus, the executive who actually sent my termination letter, conducted one day after the discovery cutoff. This was the first time anyone with authority to terminate me confirmed under oath that the harassment-complaint rationale was an actual stated reason for firing me — not an internal ER finding (Okpo, the investigator, had testified he wasn't involved in the termination decision and didn't know I'd been fired), not feedback to my senior director (West, the supervisor whose conduct was the subject of the complaint, had testified that Apple's own ER investigators told him his conduct toward me was "not appropriate"), but the VP's own actual reason for firing me.

I did not have the certified transcript of Bertolus's testimony until 3:25 PM on April 22, 2026 — less than 24 hours before the motion deadline. I paid $4,036.09 in expedited transcript fees to get it that fast. I worked through the night cutting an initial 50-page draft down to the Court's 25-page limit and filed one day late, on April 24. I filed a Motion for Leave to File Past Deadline on April 25 explaining the cause of the delay; Apple filed a motion to strike. Judge Chen has not yet ruled on either.

Once you understand that Reason 3 only crystallized at Bertolus's April 17 deposition, the substance of what Bertolus said becomes the heart of the motion. Bertolus testified that his decision to terminate me was based, in part, on my July-August 2021 complaint of sexual misconduct against my senior director Dan West related to a 2017 dinner. He testified that:

• He had reviewed only a limited version of the underlying text exchange between West and me, provided to him by Apple's legal team;
• He had "absolutely no idea" the subject of the complaint was the sous chef West had set me up with — Bertolus had thought the subject was West's "personal friend," head chef Jared Gallagher;
• When shown in the deposition the full exchange Apple had produced in discovery, Bertolus testified he had seen "not even as much" of it at the time of termination;
• And yet, he still maintained that I was the one who had misled, and that my complaint was made in bad faith.

Asked at the deposition whether my senior director's communications with me were appropriate, Bertolus responded: "you seem pretty feminine — I don't even want to even go there and speculate." When questioned about that comment later in the deposition, Bertolus stated he did not remember saying it. Apple's counsel objected to the line of questioning.

West himself, at his April 13 deposition, testified that Apple's own ER investigators told him his conduct toward me at the 2017 dinner was "not appropriate." He confirmed under oath that he had told me in text messages that what he had done that night with the sous chef "was one of the worst things [he'd] ever done." The sous chef — whom my senior director arranged a sexual or romantic liaison with at a $200+ dinner West paid for — is now deceased.

I did not know any of this when I filed my complaint in this lawsuit in 2023. I did not know any of this when Apple filed its Amended Answer. I did not know any of this when Apple filed its sworn DOL position statement, or when Apple verified its interrogatory responses through August 2025. I learned the substance of Apple's third stated reason for firing me through court-ordered discovery in April 2026.

Why "Reason 3" is, on its own, summary-judgment material.... Once you have the disclosure, the legal point is straightforward. Filing a sexual harassment complaint is protected activity under FEHA, Title VII, California Labor Code § 1102.5(b), § 98.6, and supports a Tameny claim for wrongful discharge in violation of public policy. The right to complain does not depend on the merits of the complaint. Wrighten v. Metro. Hosps., Inc., 726 F.2d 1346, 1356 (9th Cir. 1984). Treating a protected complaint as itself misconduct — calling it "misleading" because the complainant didn't object contemporaneously, or didn't text the right things during the underlying conduct — is itself retaliation. Yanowitz v. L'Oreal USA, Inc., 36 Cal.4th 1028, 1043 (2005); Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, 477 U.S. 57, 68 (1986).

When the Vice President of a Fortune 50 company testifies that a stated reason he fired a Senior Engineering Program Manager was, in part, the manager's complaint of sexual misconduct by her supervisor — a complaint that Apple's own ER investigators told the supervisor was warranted — that is direct evidence of retaliation. No burden-shifting analysis is required. Wallace v. County of Stanislaus, 245 Cal.App.4th 109, 123 (2016).

The new statute that helpsThere's also a new California statute that didn't exist when this case was filed. In 2023, California passed SB 497, codified at Labor Code § 98.6(b)(1) and effective January 1, 2024. It creates a rebuttable presumption of retaliation whenever an employer takes adverse action within 90 days of protected activity.

I cleared every protected activity in this case within 90 days of being fired. Many of them within days: 10 days after the August 30 Twitter post Bertolus identified as the trigger; 6 days after my September 3–7 written-communications requests; 11 days after my OSHA and California Labor Commissioner filings; 14 days after my NLRB filing; 17 days after my August 23 Issue Confirmation went to Apple's Senior Director of Employee Relations and Senior Director of Legal-HR; 21 days after the EPA inspection of my office; 28 days after my EEOC/DFEH charge — which issued its Right to Sue letter the morning of my termination.

The presumption attaches. And here's the thing: Apple's only stated reasons are the three identified above, and each one is itself protected activity. Retaliation cannot rebut a presumption of retaliation. Apple has nothing else to point to.

A few of the more striking facts the motion lays out:

• The exit was drafted before the supposed trigger. Apple has admitted that on August 26, 2021 — four days before the August 30 tweet Bertolus identified as the basis for his termination decision — Apple circulated an internal Keynote file titled "Draft Exit Outcomes ACP.key." An exit drafted before the stated reason for it even occurred cannot have been caused by that reason.
• Six minutes. On the evening of September 9, HR Business Partner Director Bowman emailed Bertolus a summary of what the investigators had said. Six minutes later, Bertolus replied: "Understood. I agree with the termination decision." He admitted at deposition he relied on characterizations from HR, Legal, and Global Security and had not independently reviewed the underlying records. He couldn't identify the tool in the Twitter image. He hadn't read the Verge article. He couldn't name the policies he was supposedly enforcing without prompting.
• Forty-two minutes. Earlier that same day, Employee Relations investigator Kagramanov suspended my system access 42 minutes after his first email to me — without responding to my offer in writing to participate. He testified this was the only case in his three years at Apple where he communicated directly with SVP Deirdre O'Brien, and he could not recall any other case of suspending an employee's access within an hour of initial contact.
• The crack-sealing and the laptop. On August 4, 2021 — fifteen days before EPA's planned August 19 inspection of my office at the Stewart 1 / TRW Microwave Superfund site — Apple's EHS began sealing cracks and gaps in my office floor. EPA's inspection report later noted "freshly sealed cracks." The same August 4, Apple put me on indefinite administrative leave and "removed [me] from the workplace" — hours before I was scheduled to retrieve a laptop containing text-message evidence relevant to my harassment complaint against my senior director. Investigator Okpo later cited my inability to produce the full text exchange as the basis for his "misleading complaint" finding.
• Apple is contradicting Apple under oath. Apple's Seventh Affirmative Defense pleads the Verge article as something Apple "learned — shortly after Plaintiff's employment was terminated," while every one of Apple's other sworn accounts treats that same Verge article as a pre-termination basis for the decision. Apple's March 2022 DOL position statement characterized my forced administrative leave as my own request; the Amended Answer admits the leave "ensures that [she] [is] removed from the workplace." Apple cannot keep its story straight even within its own pleadings.

I want to highlight the second termination reason briefly because, with the harassment-complaint piece now in the record, it lands differently. Apple's "refusal to cooperate" finding rests on the fact that I asked for investigation communications to be in writing. Both Kagramanov and Okpo admitted at deposition that no Apple policy prohibits written-communication investigations or requires oral-only meetings. I had a real reason for the request: I was filing an NLRB affidavit the next day, and I had pending complaints with EEOC, DFEH, OSHA, and the California Labor Commissioner. I wanted a record.

And what was the unrecorded oral conversation Apple insisted on? Okpo testified that the basis of his September 3 and September 7 outreach — the outreach Apple built Reason 2 on — was to question me about whether I had texted, during the 2017 dinner, that the sous chef my senior director set me up with was "cute." Reason 2 thus rests on my refusal to submit to unrecorded oral questioning, by a male investigator, about whether I had been interested in engaging in sexual activity with the man my supervisor set me up with — the underlying conduct of my own harassment complaint. I have a right to make a complaint, and I have a right not to be subjected to intrusive questioning about my sexual interests.

Apple has refused to comply with the Court's order requiring a Rule 30(b)(6) corporate deposition. On April 22, 2026, Magistrate Judge Westmore characterized Apple's position on the 30(b)(6) deposition as "unreasonable" and stated that Apple "should know better." Apple has continued to refuse to commit to a date.

The Court directed me to include a request for a preliminary injunction in this motion. (Order at Dkt. 273.) I'm asking the Court to reinstate me to payroll and to medical, dental, and vision insurance at the level in effect on September 9, 2021, pending final judgment. Loss of employer-provided health coverage threatening access to medical care is irreparable harm under Ninth Circuit law.

On the balance of equities, Apple's own witness gave them away: my senior director, Dan West, testified he would provide me an equivalent position if legally ordered to reinstate.

Briefing schedule from here:

• May 11 — Apple files its own MSJ (if any) and its opposition to mine (extended four days from May 7, per my offer to give Apple additional time to respond)
• May 21 — I file my reply and opposition to theirs
• May 28 — Apple's reply
• June 11, 1:30 PM — Hearing in Courtroom 5, 17th Floor, San Francisco Courthouse, before Judge Edward M. Chen
• October 19, 2026 — Five-day jury trial

This case has been pending for nearly three years. Apple has spent that time refusing to produce evidence, shifting its story, and asking the Court for delay after delay. The harassment-complaint-retaliation reason — Reason 3 — Apple kept buried in boilerplate for nearly five years and disclosed only after a court order and a deposition one day after the discovery cutoff. Now its own admissions, finally on the record under oath, are what I'm using to ask the Court to rule in my favor as a matter of law.

I'll post updates here as briefing develops. The hearing is public. So is the trial in October.

It's happening.

​— Ashley

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

Today I filed a written statement with exhibits as part of the Boston City Council Committee on Education's hearing to examine administrative transparency, student representation, and student rights at Northeastern University and other private higher education institutions in the City of Boston.

See, Docket #0587, "Order for a hearing to review administrative transparency, equitable student representation, and student freedoms in higher education," https://www.boston.gov/public-notices/16570106. 

The hearing was sponsored by Councilors Julia M. Mejia and Miniard Culpepper and held on March 23, 2026 at Boston City Hall. The notice states: "the Boston City Council has an interest in understanding how higher education institutions in the City are addressing issues related to transparency, governance, and student engagement." (Notice PDF).

My statement provides firsthand testimony and documentary evidence from my time as Program Manager at Northeastern University from September 2023 through September 2024. My statement addresses the three core concerns identified and documents how NEU's internal "accountability" infrastructure functions as an instrument of suppression and concealment.

My statement includes:

• NEU's "Impact Engine" initiative, which based on my experience, are internally funded shell programs designed to obtain federal center grants without substantive program scope or activity, while concurrently operating outside university policy, federal grant regulations, and applicable law;
• My formal complaints to NEU's internal compliance, audit, and HR functions beginning in January 2024 about a large "Impact Engine", and NEU's institutional poor response to those complaints;
• The retaliatory performance review issued fifty-eight days after my formal complaint and escalation that claimed my protected complaint was misconduct and my performance development plan was to stop making complaints and do whatever my supervisor told me to do; it also claimed I don't "understand" "regulations" and instructed me to not speak with legal, compliance, or HR teams without prior supervisor approval; and then NEU's VP of Audit/Compliance's subsequent condonation of both the underlying violations and the retaliation;
• NEU's abrupt termination of my employment during PFML-protected medical leave, citing the "performance plan" that directed me to stop reporting compliance concerns or insisting on regulatory compliance; 
• Federal enforcement actions following my complaints, including an NLRB finding of merit on my complaint of unlawful policies, FBI and EPA OIG investigations, OSHA and MassDEP investigations, and NSF audit findings confirming the same failures I had reported internally; and,
• Examples of the structural mechanisms by which NEU coerces student workers (particularly international students on temporary visas) into complicity with its institutional misconduct.

The statement is accompanied by a sixteen-exhibit evidentiary packet including the EthicsPoint complaint, performance review, audit correspondence, PFML and termination documentation, NLRB charges and letter, and federal agency complaints and correspondence.
​
Written comments submitted to the Committee become part of the public record and are available to all Councilors. The statement and exhibits are attached below.
​

E-filed statement: 

E-filed appendix with evidence packet: 

Apple filed an emergency letter with a federal court demanding sanctions, contempt, a restraining order on my speech, and deletion of my blog post and social media posts about my NLRB charges. They wanted an unrecorded phone call within 24 hours to make it happen. No motions, no evidence, no briefing, no court reporter, and no public visibility to what happens. Apple wanted my coworkers to know Apple was getting me called into detention with a Judge, but they didn't want anyone to see what was said or understand what the outcome was, other than it was all happening because Apple called me a "leaker" when I complained about work conditions and demanded that Apple be a better employer. 

Apple's lawyers even emailed me demanding I delete social media posts and blog posts that they wanted me to self-identify as "leaking" about work conditions. I told Apple's lawyers to eat rocks. Then they escalated to a federal court, accusing me of gross misconduct and saying I'm causing irreparable harm to Apple, and cited and quoted my NLRB charges against Apple alleging that Apple violated the NLRA.

Apple also repeatedly claimed that me complaining about Apple's intrusive requests, monitoring, questioning and "studies" of employee genital secretions was also Apple Confidential and suggested I was "breaching" court Orders (that's asking a court to hold me in contempt), and should be forced to delete my posts (that's sanctions/injunctive relief), and be ordered to stop "leaking" (that's a prior restraint gag order).

I, once again, told Apple's lawyers to eat rocks. 

During this period of time Apple accumulated three new NLRB charges like it was collecting Pokémon cards. 

​....​

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.
​
​​....

​On January 13 2026, a Case Management conference was held and the Court granted my request for a Summary Judgement schedule. At the prior hearing last year, the Judge said he wanted it to be a dual Summary Judgement requiring Apple to file any Summary Judgement motion they may have too.

(Summary Judgement is where the Court will rule on substantive issues in the case, or even the whole case, prior to trial if there is "no dispute of fact" either with parties agreeing to the facts or the existence of direct evidence like emails or documents proving a fact. Employers usually love to file Motions for Summary Judgement in retaliation cases - they have most of the evidence, refuse to produce anything to the employee, try to make the employee sound nuts, and quickly move to end the case before the employee can get any proof of employer wrongdoing - and they usually win because of that tomfoolery)

Here, Apple repeatedly said they were not ready to file a Motion for Summary Judgement and kept asking for & creating delays.

Apple even said in the Joint Status for that hearing they believed it was too "premature to expedite the presentation of evidence." Of course they don't want to present evidence, all of the evidence shows Apple's at fault. At the last Status Conference the Judge he was going to schedule the dual Summary Judgement at the next conference.

In the Joint Status on Jan. 6 Apple still said they were "evaluating whether to file a motion for summary judgment and/or partial summary judgment." It's wild to hear an employer say that, especially when the Judge already said he would schedule it, and it shows how meritless Apple's defense has been all along.

The Judge issued a schedule on Feb. 6 2026, and my deadline for filing my Motion for Summary Judgment on April 23. Then Apple will file their motion and opposition on May 7. I then file my reply and opposition on May 21.  Apple's reply is due May 28. Then the public hearing is June 11 2026. (It will be in person - come watch!). 

Following the Jan. 13 2026 Case Management conference, on Feb. 6 2026, the Northern District of California also published the trial schedule for Gjovik v Apple retaliation lawsuit (Case No. 23-cv-04597-EMC). 

The Case Management & Pretrial Order for a Jury Trial ordered the following: 

• Non-expert discovery ends: 4/16/2026
• Expert discovery cutoff: 5/28/2026
• Last day for dispositive motions: 6/4/2026​
• Final Pretrial Conference: 9/22/2026, at 2:30 p.m.
• Public Jury Trial: 10/19/2026, at 8:30 a.m. Courtroom 5, 17th Floor, San Francisco Courthouse

​.....

On Dec. 11 2025, I filed a sixty-day notice of an incoming Clean Water Act Citizen Suit, as required by Section 505(b) of the Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. § 1365(b). This notice communicates my intent to file a citizen enforcement action for ongoing violations of Clean Water Act Sections 404, 401, and 1311 at the Saratoga Creek system and adjacent wetlands in Santa Clara, California.

Between approximately 1950 and 1985, the parties identified in this notice discharged fill material into Saratoga Creek and adjacent jurisdictional wetlands without obtaining required permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

They repeatedly buried Saratoga Creek (a superficial and 200ft below ground surface aquifer) by placing fill material in the creek channel and installing underground pipes, managing the Waters of the U.S. as if it were stormwater runoff.

They filled approximately 500+ acres of tideland-adjacent wet meadow, destroyed rare and nationally important ecosystems, and intentionally installed a drop structure that functions as a complete barrier to fish passage in a stream that provides natural habitat for Chinook Salmon.

They also razed prime farmland of international acclaim against the farmers' wishes, non-consensually annexed these pioneer farming families' land, disturbed soils known to contain Native American burial grounds and artifacts, presumably disposed of Native American remains via a garbage dump, clear-cut irreplaceable pear orchards, and filled the natural wetland and creek in order to cover it with concrete and build industrial parks—which they used to create no less than four Superfund toxic waste cleanup sites in just a couple of decades.

None of these activities were authorized by Clean Water Act Section 404 permits, and no Section 401 state water quality certification was obtained.

These violations continue to the present day. The fill material remains in place in waters of the United States. The buried creek continues flowing through underground infrastructure, or builds pressure underground where it lost the ability to surface and seep.

Each day the unpermitted fill remains constitutes a continuing violation of the Clean Water Act.

The attached notice provides detailed documentation of these violations. (There is also a text version of the notice).

Additional exhibits and supporting documentation are available in an Appendix. 

The notice will be sent via certified mail will satisfy the sixty-day notice requirement under 33 U.S.C. § 1365(b). If the violations are not remediated within sixty days, I intend to file suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, civil penalties, and attorneys' fees. If the EPA or the Army Corps commences enforcement action within sixty days, a citizen suit may be precluded under 33 U.S.C. § 1365(b)(1)(B).

I would strongly prefer that the EPA and Army Corps take action as I am not a civil engineer and this matter will require professional engineering oversight. 

I have a pending citizen suit already filed in the Northern District of California regarding hazardous waste and related violations at a specific facility in this location (Gjovik v. Apple Inc., Santa Clara, Jenab, et al., No. 5:25-cv-07360, N.D. Cal.). Only in researching that facility did I realize what was done in the overall area, and accordingly I filed this Notice and request enforcement action. 

- Ashley M. Gjovik

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.

Legal update! ⚖️

We now have an Environmental Citizen Suit filed in federal court against Apple, city of Santa Clara, & the property owner over their stupid skunkworks fab!

​It's time to shut that deathtrap down. 🛢️ ☠️ ⚗️

The Complaint is is available on CourtListener here and available below.

​NBC Bay Area nightly news covered our rally & press conference at Apple's skunkworks semiconductor fab next to thousands of apartments, public parks, & a children's playground. 

Watch the local news coverage at 3250 Scott Blvd today (Aug. 16 2025):