§ 1002.5.Generally

Chapter 3.6 addresses a different confidentiality-adjacent problem than Chapters 3.5's disclosure bans: employers using settlements to blacklist employees who raised claims. Section 1002.5 prohibits an employment-dispute settlement from including a provision that prohibits, prevents, or otherwise restricts an aggrieved settling party from getting future work with the employer being sued, or with that employer's parent, subsidiary, division, affiliate, or contractor. A provision violating this rule in an agreement entered on or after January 1, 2020 is void as a matter of law and against public policy.

Two exceptions keep the rule from overreaching. The employer and employee can still agree to end the current employment relationship. And the employer can still bar future employment if it made and documented, before the employee filed the claim, a good-faith determination that the employee engaged in sexual harassment, sexual assault, or any criminal conduct — a timing requirement meant to stop employers from manufacturing a pretextual finding after the fact. The section also confirms it doesn't force an employer to rehire someone, or keep employing someone, when there's a legitimate, nondiscriminatory, nonretaliatory reason not to.

An "aggrieved person" under this section is anyone who, in good faith, filed a claim against the employer in court, before an administrative agency, in an alternative dispute resolution forum, or through the employer's own internal complaint process — a broad definition that reaches informal complaints, not just lawsuits.