SACRAMENTO — A California lawmaker asked the Assembly to issue a subpoena to a Bay Area woman who is willing to testify in support of a bill but is barred by a nondisclosure agreement with her former employer.

The subpoena, if granted by Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount (Los Angeles County), could become a new tool for the Legislature to allow victims of sexual harassment, wage theft and discrimination to talk publicly, despite forced arbitration agreements and settlements that require that they keep their silence.

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, D-San Diego, said the Legislature has not issued a subpoena in more than a decade. She hopes to use it to enable Tara Zoumer to testify in open session next week.

Zoumer was an associate community manager at WeWork, a multibillion-dollar startup that rents office space to entrepreneurs, when the company instituted a policy in 2015 requiring workers to agree to take employment disputes to binding arbitration instead of court.

Zoumer told the New York Times in 2016 that WeWork fired her when she refused to sign the policy. She then sued the company, claiming wrongful termination.

She said Wednesday that she could no longer publicly discuss anything about her employment at WeWork because of a nondisclosure agreement she signed last year as part of a lawsuit settlement.

Zoumer appeared at a Capitol news conference Wednesday in support of Gonzalez Fletcher’s bill, AB3080, but said she could not talk about her case. WeWork declined to comment.

Many nondisclosure agreements require those who enter into them to repay the money awarded in a settlement if they speak about their case. They can also be exposed to further financial damages. Nondisclosure pacts are often included in binding arbitration settlements.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, more than 60 million workers in the country are barred from filing lawsuits against their employers because of binding-arbitration policies.

Subpoenaing Zoumer to testify before the Assembly would legally free her from her nondisclosure agreement, Gonzalez Fletcher said.

“This would be a historic step,” she said. “Whether we can use the subpoena power on a larger scale and give more women who wish to speak publicly the opportunity to do so is something we will be investigating.”

Gonzalez Fletcher’s bill would ban employers from requiring workers to sign waivers forcing them to go to arbitration when they file a complaint alleging sexual assault, harassment, discrimination, retaliation or other claims. Companies could still offer such waivers to workers on a voluntary basis, but would be barred from retaliating against those who decline.

“A subpoena would compel, and thus allow, Tara (Zoumer) to testify,” Gonzalez Fletcher said. “Because of (a nondisclosure agreement), this is the only way we can actually understand more about what is happening during this agreements.”

Rendon’s office said the speaker was reviewing the request.

Supporters of the bill, including the California Labor Federation and the United Food and Commercial Workers union, said forced-arbitration agreements are most commonly used in industries that employ large numbers of low-wage workers. Because victims are prevented from talking about wrongdoing at work, instances of wage theft and discrimination are not being reported to the California labor commissioner and complaints are kept out of courts, supporters say.

Gonzalez Fletcher said forced-arbitration policies can also enable serial sexual harassers to avoid exposure.

“It creates a system that is unaccountable to the public,” said Evelyn Rangel Medina of the Restaurant Opportunity Centers of California, a nonprofit that supports restaurant workers.

Business groups like the California Chamber of Commerce oppose the bill, saying it will increase the number of lawsuits against employers. That will benefit only trial lawyers, not employees, they argue.

Low-wage workers already face financial barriers to filing lawsuits, and removing arbitration agreements will make disputes harder to resolve, opponents say.

Gonzalez Fletcher’s bill would not rescind nondisclosure agreements that have already been signed.

Among the bill’s supporters is Susan Fowler, a former software engineer at Uber who wrote a blog post about alleged sexism at the company, prompting several other women to reveal similar conduct in Silicon Valley. Fowler was required to sign a binding-arbitration agreement when she accepted the job at Uber, preventing her from suing the company.

“There was no path to justice for me or my co-workers,” Fowler said Wednesday. “Ending forced arbitration is the single most import thing the Legislature can do to prevent harassment and discrimination in the workplace.”

Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @MelodyGutierrez