Amazon’s Workplace Gag Order Violates Labor Law, Judge Says

Amazon.com Inc must rewrite several workplace policies after a National Labor Relations Board judge held the company forced employees to sign unlawfully restrictive agreements starting in 2020.

The handbook provisions, including confidentiality, non-solicitation, and non-interference policies, illegally restricted workers’ rights to discuss working conditions and organize, NLRB Administrative Law Judge Kimberly Sorg-Graves said in a decision Tuesday.

The rules, which were first disseminated in 2020, prevented workers from discussing with each other anything aside from their own terms and conditions of employment and prohibited them from encouraging other employees or business partners from terminating their relationships with Amazon, according to the decision.

Sorg-Graves held these policies to be overly broad, despite Amazon’s arguments that it amended the confidentiality rule in 2024 to include discussions of coworkers’ “wages, hours, working conditions, or terms of employment,” in the savings clause. The judge ruled that Amazon hadn’t amended their rule in a timely manner and couldn’t prove the alteration applied to all employees.

“The savings clause is silent to other rights protected by the act, such as the right to request that customers and other outside entities boycott respondent and use information acquired through their work to engage in such activities,” Sorg-Graves said.

The NLRB’s standards for assessing legality of workplace rules has oscillated over the years, depending on which party is in the majority. The Biden-era board reset the standard to turn on whether an employee would read the rule as interfering with their rights under the law, restricting the types of provisions allowed. Their ruling in Stericycle Inc.could be scrutinized by a Republican-leaning board under President Donald Trump but the Senate has yet to confirm his nominees to restore the NLRB’s quorum.

The decision comes in the wake of union organizing at several warehouses operated by the e-commerce giant and amid a renewed effort by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to organize the company’s vast network of delivery drivers.

Sorg-Graves ordered Amazon to cease enforcing the unlawful provisions and revise the agreements.

An Amazon spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case is Amazon.com Inc., N.L.R.B. A.L.J., No. 19-CA-295640, 12/2/25.