How Jessica Denson’s Lawsuit Voided All Trump Campaign NDAs

Jessica Denson’s lawsuit against the Trump campaign over its nondisclosure agreement ended in a class-action settlement, approved by a federal judge on October 11, 2023, that voided the NDA’s non-disclosure and non-disparagement provisions for all 422 employees, contractors, and volunteers who worked on the 2016 campaign.¹²³

What the Campaign NDA Required

Every person who worked on the 2016 Trump campaign signed the same form agreement. It defined “Confidential Information” across 35 categories, reaching into “personal life,” “relationships,” and “political and business affairs,” and it covered not just Trump but his family members and any legal entity they owned or controlled, more than 500 companies at the time of the litigation.⁴ A separate non-disparagement clause barred any public statement that could “demean or disparage” Trump or his interests.⁵

Neither provision ever expired. Both applied “during the term of your service and at all times thereafter,” running for the rest of the signer’s life.⁴

How Denson’s Fight Started

Denson worked in the campaign’s data division as a national phone bank administrator, then was moved to Hispanic voter outreach after catching then-CEO Steve Bannon’s attention.⁶ On November 14, 2017, representing herself, she filed a $25 million lawsuit in New York Supreme Court against the campaign and her former supervisor Camilo Sandoval, alleging discrimination, harassment, a hostile work environment, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.⁷

The campaign’s response set the pattern for the years of litigation that followed. In December 2017, its lawyers filed an arbitration demand accusing Denson of violating her NDA and seeking $1.5 million in damages.⁸ Denson refused to participate, believing arbitration was an unlawful attempt to keep her claims out of court. In October 2018, the arbitrator ruled for the campaign by default, found the NDA “valid and enforceable,” and ordered Denson to pay $24,808 in legal fees plus additional costs totaling roughly $52,000.⁹ The campaign then used the judgment to freeze her bank account and tried to seize $1,200 she had raised through GoFundMe.

How the Courts Unwound the NDA

The first crack came in state court. In August 2018, New York Judge Arlene Bluth ruled that Denson’s NDA did not cover her employment-related discrimination and harassment claims, because the agreement did not address job responsibilities or salary.⁹ In February 2020, the First Department of the New York Appellate Division vacated the arbitration award entirely, finding the arbitrator had punished Denson for statements protected by the absolute privilege that attaches to judicial proceedings, and had exceeded his authority by considering Twitter and GoFundMe posts made after the arbitration demand was filed.¹⁰

The decisive ruling came from federal court. In June 2020, Denson, now represented by the nonpartisan nonprofit Protect Democracy along with Bowles & Johnson and Ballard Spahr, filed a federal class-action lawsuit challenging the NDA itself. The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Paul G. Gardephe in the Southern District of New York.¹¹

On March 30, 2021, Judge Gardephe granted summary judgment for Denson and declared the NDA’s nondisclosure and non-disparagement provisions “invalid and unenforceable.”¹² He rested the decision on New York contract law rather than the First Amendment, finding the agreement’s “sweeping, boilerplate language” so broad and vague that an employee could not reasonably know what speech they had given up, defeating the meeting of the minds a contract requires.⁴ The court also found the campaign was not acting to protect legitimate interests like polling data or fundraising strategy, but was using the NDA to suppress unfavorable speech. Gardephe refused to save the agreement by editing or narrowing its terms, and his ruling also swept away the roughly $50,000 in arbitration judgments the campaign had been trying to enforce.¹³

The Class-Action Settlement

Gardephe’s 2021 ruling on its own applied only to Denson. Her lawyers moved to extend it to everyone who had signed the same form agreement. On January 13, 2023, the parties filed a proposed class-action settlement in which the campaign admitted the non-disclosure and non-disparagement provisions in its form NDA were “invalid and unenforceable.”²¹⁴¹

Under the settlement, the campaign paid $450,000. Denson received $25,000 personally; the rest covered legal fees and costs.³¹⁵ The campaign was required to notify every affected individual in writing that they were “no longer bound by these non-disclosure and non-disparagement provisions.” A federal judge rejected the campaign’s request to keep the monetary terms sealed.

What It Means for Other Signers and Other NDAs

The reasoning in Denson’s case became the template for other former staffers challenging the same agreement. In September 2021, arbitrator T. Andrew Brown ruled that Omarosa Manigault Newman’s NDA was “too sweeping to be legally enforceable,” finding the language left protected information to the “subjective determination of one person.” The campaign was ordered to pay more than $1.3 million in legal fees and costs.¹⁶¹⁷¹⁸

The scope of the ruling has limits worth understanding. Gardephe decided the case on New York contract law, not the First Amendment, so it did not produce a broad constitutional holding. Joe Slaughter of Ballard Spahr said the decision “underscores the limited purposes for which NDAs may be used in New York,” which can still protect legitimate trade secrets and commercial information.⁴ Campaigns remain free to use narrower NDAs to protect specific sensitive material such as polling data or fundraising strategy.¹² The class-action settlement itself covers only the 2016 campaign’s form NDA and its signers; it does not automatically reach agreements signed for the 2020 campaign or later.

Denson’s Individual Case Is Still Separate

The class action resolved the NDA question but not Denson’s original harassment and discrimination claims. As of 2024, that individual lawsuit against the campaign was still ongoing, and a federal magistrate judge ordered the campaign to produce a list of all discrimination and harassment complaints filed during the 2016 and 2020 campaigns by May 31, 2024.⁶ Anyone tracking the underlying workplace claims should treat that case as distinct from the NDA settlement, which is final.

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