Congress passes law banning non-disclosure agreements in sexual harassment cases

I was actually bound by two NDAs in my life. One was, as you said, with FOX News, and that's a post-dispute NDA, which this bill doesn't apply to. That means it was signed as part of a settlement.

The other NDA that I was bound to was with the governor of New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy. And that was on the first day of work. And, of course, an NDA like this would absolutely apply to that case, because, in that instance, I was a witness to horrible toxicity on his campaign. I spoke to him about it.

I confided in him that, if he didn't get it under control, something bad was going to happen. And, sure enough, something did happen. A young woman came to me about a year later, and told me that she'd been sexually assaulted by one of my colleagues.

Instead of being able to talk to her about it, I was reminded by his attorneys, by Governor Murphy's attorneys over and over that I couldn't speak to her because I was bound by an NDA. I couldn't tell her anything I'd witnessed, anything I had experienced, or even really tell her that she wasn't alone, that I'd heard of other women who were in similar situations.

That was an incredibly heartbreaking moment in my life, because here you have a young woman who's coming to you asking for help, and you can't even tell her why you can't help her, because my NDA was so broad, I couldn't tell her I had an NDA.

And so, as a result of that experience, that really motivated me to make sure this was never going to happen to anybody else. That's why Gretchen and I got together to form Lift Our Voices. That was my experience that really motivated me to form Lift Our Voices. And that was my experience that really motivated me to make sure that the Speak Out Act was never going to prevent one more person from being able to tell their own stories or the stories of other people.