I Filed My Motion for Summary Judgment Against Apple — Each of Apple's Three Reasons for Firing Me Is Itself Protected Activity

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