Carlson became all too familiar with such agreements when she took on Fox News last summer.
In June 2016, Carlson sent the conservative cable news channel into turmoil after alleging that, following 11 years of service, she was fired from Fox News for rejecting sexual advances by the network’s chairman, Roger Ailes.
In her legal battle against Fox News, lawyers for Ailes argued that the suit should be moved from New Jersey Superior Court to arbitration, a closed door process that limits public disclosure. They claimed Carlson’s suit was a “tar-and-feather campaign,” and they pointed to language in her contract requiring any disputes with Fox to be worked out in arbitration.
Fox eventually settled with Carlson for $20 million, pushed Ailes out of the organization and publicly apologized.
On Tuesday afternoon, Carlson said the arbitration agreement stifled her from speaking out. The practice, which is widely used by companies, creates a dangerous workplace environment for women.
“By forcing women to be silent about illegal and abusive behavior which causes them much pain, in many cases, the employer is able to leave the abusers in the workplace to harass again,” Carlson said. “The arbitration process, often argued to be quicker and cheaper for employees, instead silences millions of other survivors who may have come forward if they knew they weren’t alone.”
While there were no Republicans at the press conference, Carlson said “this is not a partisan issue.”
“Republicans, Democrats and independents are all sexually harassed,” she said. “The harassers come from all political parties as well.”
Several prominent Democratic senators have rolled out a series of bills aimed at prohibiting mandatory arbitration agreements, which are often tucked into employment agreements and consumer contracts in order to force disputes out of the courtroom into closed-door sessions.
U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., introduced The Arbitration Fairness Act, which would invalidate arbitration agreements for any employment, consumer, antitrust or civil rights dispute. Arbitration provisions between companies and labor unions would be exempted if the bill is enacted.
“This bill gives Americans a real choice,” Franken said. “If a consumer or worker wants to take his case into arbitration, than by all means he is free to do so, provided the corporation is also willing to do so.”
“However,” Franken continued, “if the consumer or employee wants to go to court, then that option would once again be available.
The bill has attracted 24 co-sponsors, including Vermont U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders. No Republicans have supported the legislation.
Leahy has been pushing for reforms to arbitration agreements for more than a decade. He endorsed Franken’s bill Tuesday before reintroducing companion legislation. The Restoring Statutory Rights Act aims to add enforcement mechanisms for workers who seek to remedy problems with their employes in court. The bill, if enacted, would also restrict federal injunctions of state statutes that ban forced arbitration.
Leahy’s bill looks to rein in a series of recent Supreme Court rulings, including AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion. In the 5-4 AT&T ruling, the court concluded that commercial arbitration agreements cannot be invalidated by state legal doctrine. After the 2011 SCOTUS ruling, a flurry of large companies — including Netflix, Sony and eBay — added arbitration clauses to consumer contracts.
“No company — no matter how big, no matter how wealthy, no matter how powerful — can say ‘We are going to push you out of court, we are going to put you behind closed doors,” Leahy said.
Forced arbitration clauses have proliferated in recent years, according to a 2015 New York Times investigation. Today, companies of all stripes insert the clauses into contracts in order to suppress unflattering information from public disclosure.
Such is the case with Wells Fargo, a multinational bank that became embroiled in scandal last year after it was found to have used customers’ personal information to open millions of unauthorized accounts. The bank has invoked an obscure arbitration clause in consumer contracts to steer lawsuits out of court and into secret negotiations with friendly arbitrators instead of a jury.
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who is a co-sponsor of both the Franken and Leahy bills, said corporate influence has infiltrated the executive and legislative branches of government. He said that while the judicial branch is hard to corrupt, the proliferation of arbitration agreements represents a troubling corporate push to exert influence over the independence of the courts.
“[Corporations] try to influence every decisionmaker that they can, and they often succeed,” White House said. “But trying to meddle with a jury? It’s a crime. And the jury is always new, so you can’t go and find out who the jurors are going to be, and do nice things for their brothers and go threaten them that if they don’t behave you’re going to run opponents against them.”
