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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 31, 2026 Contact: Ashley Gjovik | (415) 964-6272 | [email protected] LaborMedia | [email protected] WORKERS, LABOR GROUPS TO RALLY AT SAN FRANCISCO FEDERAL COURTHOUSE OVER COURT-ORDERED GAG ON EMPLOYEE SPEECH ABOUT HER OWN BODY Federal judge ordered fired Apple worker to delete public speech about workplace conditions, NLRB charges, and employee grievances — and to stop talking about it going forward, potentially forever — based solely on a Big Tech employer's say-so, and with no hearing, no findings, no motion, and pending NLRB charges. SAN FRANCISCO — On Thursday, April 2, 2026, at 12:00 PM, workers, labor organizers, and whistleblower advocates will rally outside the Phillip Burton Federal Building and United States Courthouse at 450 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, to demand that federal courts stop allowing employers to silence workers who speak publicly about their own working conditions, their own bodies, and their own experiences on the job. The rally is organized by Ashley Gjovik, a former Apple senior engineering program manager who was fired in 2021 after publicly reporting environmental hazards, invasive employee studies, and workplace surveillance — and who has now been ordered by a federal magistrate judge to delete her public speech and stop talking about Apple's unlawful conduct and unfair labor practices, based on Apple's unilateral claim that her own experiences, witness testimony, and complaints are Apple's "confidential business information." The rally is held in partnership with LaborMedia, Tech Workers United, Whistleblower United (WBU), California Coalition for Workers Memorial Day, WorkWeek, and the United Front Committee for a Labor Party (UFCLP).  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:
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  
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