A former Trump campaign staffer filed a class-action lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of anyone who worked on the 2016 campaign who signed a nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreement.
The lawsuit filed by Jessica Denson says the agreement should be void for reasons including its language being too vague, its lack of time and geographic limitations as well as “a legitimate purpose,” and because it allows President Trump to restrain free speech rights under the First Amendment and gives him the option to determine what is “private” and “confidential.”
Denson’s lawyers said the NDA is unlawful because it imposes monetary penalties on employees who could potentially sue over discrimination and harassment, campaign finance laws, failure to pay wages, among other things.
“The Form NDAs effectively strip employees, contractors and volunteers of their ability to pursue any of their rights to redress workplace misconduct,” the lawyers wrote in the filing to the American Arbitration Association. “Anything and everything they could do will of necessity contain some information that a Trump Person could find disparaging or a disclosure of confidential information.”
Denson has claimed she was discriminated against and harassed by her supervisor while she worked as a phone bank administrator and later as the Hispanic outreach coordinator for the campaign.
She filed a sex discrimination case in New York state court in November 2017 and was ordered to pay $50,000 in a secret arbitration proceeding.
The Trump campaign has targeted several former staffers who have spoken negatively about the president, the Trump administration, or his campaign. Former White House staffers Omarosa Manigault Newman and Cliff Sims, who both also worked on the campaign, wrote books critical of Trump and were accused of breaking their NDAs.
Sims sued the president earlier this month, alleging Trump used his campaign to unlawfully seek retribution against former staffers and prohibit them from exercising their First Amendment rights, in response to the campaign filing an arbitration claim against him.
The campaign said last year it had brought a case against Manigault Newman, though its unclear where that case stands now.
It also sued former campaign aide Sam Nunberg in 2016, later reaching a confidential settlement.
