On Monday morning, The New Yorker published a piece of reportage by Jane Mayer depicting the lengths to which Fox News, my former employer, has gone to gratify Donald Trump and his administration. It’s already public knowledge that Trump tunes in to Fox regularly and has his opinions formed by the likes of Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. Nor would it be unexpected that Fox might benefit from a relationship with its most loyal viewer. (Among the article’s many assertions, Mayer claims that Trump wanted to block AT&T’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, which “many people suspected” was a personal rebuke to CNN and his old frenemy, Jeff Zucker. The deal went through.) Perhaps some readers were surprised to learn the extent to which the interests of Fox News align with Trump. Some may have been surprised, in particular, to read a passage in Mayer’s piece depicting FoxNews.com editors spiking a story from a reporter about the president’s affair with a porn star named Stormy Daniels. The reporter was eventually told, “Good reporting, kiddo. But Rupert wants Donald Trump to win. So just let it go.”

After the story’s publication, my phone lit up with text messages. After all, I was that reporter. But there isn’t much that I can say about the incident in Mayer’s story, because I am subject to an N.D.A. In March 2018, I settled a lawsuit that I brought against Fox News claiming gender and disability discrimination and retaliation. The settlement contained a non-disclosure clause. I was in the middle of a high-risk pregnancy and wanted to move on with my life.

Requiring employees to sign non-disclosure agreements is a common practice in corporations. N.D.A.s can range from barring an employee from sharing trade secrets, which makes sense, to barring victims of sexual harassment, discrimination, and/or retaliation from talking about what happened to them, which can be abusive and dangerous. As a result, N.D.A.s often re-victimize the victim. They enable companies to buy their way out of sexual harassment and discrimination claims, without having to come to grips with the corporate culture that allowed or even encouraged that very behavior. It also prevents current and prospective employees from ever learning about predators within the company who may be in a position to permanently harm their careers, if not their lives. Just think about the harrowing disclosures that would come to light if companies were to waive all N.D.A.s and let the victims tell their stories.

On Twitter, I posed the question, “When will N.D.A.s be unenforceable against victims of discrimination, harassment & retaliation? More states need to follow NY and CA. Workplaces need to be places of respect.” Reactions were mixed. Some were positive, some negative, just as you might expect. But one question pervaded the conversation: why do the alleged victims of workplace wrongdoings agree to gag orders in the first place? Nancy Erika Smith, the employment attorney who represented both Gretchen Carlson and myself, told me recently, “I always object to N.D.A.s, and have for 38 years. But employers insist on them in settlement agreements. If my client wants to settle her case and move on with her life, she is forced to accept an N.D.A.”

Litigation is costly, both financially and emotionally. A year of litigation can cost tens of thousands of dollars just in out-of-pocket expenses, causing already compromised employees to further exhaust their limited resources. While going to trial may allow the facts to become public, that is an unlikely scenario. Few cases actually go to trial, and those that do can take three years or more to get there. During that time, it can be extremely difficult for a plaintiff to find new employment, because prospective employers are reluctant to hire people who have sued their previous employers or are engaged in ongoing litigation. Women who seek justice through the courts are frequently branded as “troublemakers.”