Love to get a lawyer’s view regarding how enforceable these NDAs are.
They’re not enforceable at all when it comes to government service—even unpaid service.
But former interns usually won’t have the resources to hire a lawyer to fight that battle. (Although since unpaid intern jobs like this generally skew to rich parents, maybe they will…)
Transparency in government? We have an NDA for that.
So that is an act of intimidation only?
Ding!Ding!Ding!Ding!Ding!Ding!
Those who demand NDAs have their reasons: they have something to hide.
That’s exactly what it is. They’re not “agreements” in any legal sense of the word. The damn things don’t even purport to recite consideration, which, of course they can’t, because the kids are unpaid. It’s deeply unethical in every sense of the word. And I’m rather shocked that somehow that fact didn’t make its way into the Vox article, what with all these employment law experts they had commenting on them and Vox being a Very Serious Policy Wonk site. Any second semester 1-L is going to look at that thing and say “no consideration!” I can’t imagine their experts didn’t do likewise.
Also, I couldn’t help but notice the part where they say unpaid interns might have access to stuff classified at exactly the same levels that had Jim Comey saying “extremely careless” and Republicans chanting “lock her up!” without, apparently, even obtaining a security clearance. But it’s okay, because they signed an unenforceable promise thingee of some kind. And certainly, sexual harassment targets and access to classified information go together like peas and carrots.
Whew. I am so glad that members of congress, in the wake of the #metoo movement made efforts to review the processes of reporting improper and abusive conduct of members or their staff.
~cough~
Looks like the same old protection racket at work - with even more efforts at protection (of congress members.)
Still thinking like a shmuck
Unfortunately, FOIA doesn’t cover Congress (or the White House). But that doesn’t mean these agreements are enforceable. As @ncsteve commented, they lack consideration and therefore cannot be a binding contract. The example Vox posted looked like a mere promise, with not even an effort to identify the consideration for the agreement not to disclose.
Maybe it’s unenforceable. But if it saves the career of even one harasser or grifter, isn’t that worth the small amount of effort required? In Congress you have to sometimes settle for a measured kind of progress.
They should be viewed as (unpaid) US government employees, and any NDA should be with their employer, not with the particular Congressperson whose office they happen to be working in. One intern who has seen something that ought to be disclosed in the public interest should find a good-government not-for-profit to agree to shoulder his or her litigation expenses and become the one to challenge the practice. This kind of crap has no place in a democracy. Chances are the instances of this have increased since Trump became president*.
I’m sure the members using these agreements would be horrified to learn that you have such a negative interpretation of their motives.
We are experiencing a deadly flu season, so, in the interest of public health, the members have turned to these, uh, pledges to replace the unsanitary pinky promise.
How much of this is protection from James O’Keefe style misrepresentation?
Seems like it would be very easy to write out exceptions for harassment in any case. But I don’t know anything about employment law.
So Interns, if you see something, say something. If someone threatens you for speaking up tell them to go f*ck themselves. The sanctions for true wrongdoing far exceed the scope of any NDA threat.
This kind of nonsense typically issues out of a wacko who looks like Stephen Miller.
No intimidation! No intimidation!
Meh…the consideration is that they provide services and, in exchange, receive experience and a shiny gold star type item on their resumes. That’s sort of the “exchange” of “things of value” when you’re talking about an internship…the learning experience and resume building here being quite valuable.
They should absolutely be considered void as against public policy though…or at least parts of them. Moreover, as contracts of adhesion, they’d need to be interpreted strictly against the party that drafted it and said “take it or leave it.” Thus, if a congresscritter wanted to enforce it with respect to sexual harassment or some whistle-blower activity, the Court would (or at least should) tell them to go jump in a pig run.
These NDA’s are just an attempt at intimidation. How effective? Who knows? They may be just effective enough to scare some kids.