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- Nike on Wednesday asked a judge to keep some records sealed in a potential class-action lawsuit.
- The company said it’s willing to unseal the “overwhelming majority” of information.
- Plaintiffs’ attorneys told Insider they plan to challenge the motion.
On Wednesday, Nike asked a federal judge to keep parts of a sweeping sexual harassment and gender discrimination lawsuit under seal, setting up a potential legal battle over some of the lawsuit’s most sensitive records.
The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, was filed in 2018 on behalf of four former Nike employees who claimed they were subject to gender discrimination and sexual harrassment while at Nike. The lawsuit followed explosive reports in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
Nike has broadly denied the claims and repeatedly said it has a zero tolerance policy for discrimination.
The case is proceeding under a protective order, a legal move that enables lawyers to more quickly and freely exchange confidential information, including sensitive human resources records.
On January 10, plaintiffs filed a motion for class certification, a critical filing in any case that seeks class-action status. It’s when plaintiffs put forth their best arguments for why alleged behavior is systemic.
The motion for class certification against Nike, and its roughly 100 exhibits, are sealed, pursuant to the protective order the case is currently moving forward under.
In its motion Wednesday, Nike’s attorneys said they’ve conferred with plaintiffs’ attorneys since mid-January about unsealing parts of the motion for class certification and some of the exhibits, but have been unable to come to an agreement.
Nike’s lawyers said the company is willing to make the “overwhelming majority” of plaintiffs’ motion and exhibits public, but it wants several records to remain sealed, including a plaintiffs’ analysis of aggregate pay shortfalls and documents about three former employees who were the subject of complaints.
Nike’s lawyers argue the pay shortfall conclusions are “fundamentally flawed” and should remain under seal, partly because they’re based on confidential individual compensation information and releasing them would “only serve to promote public scandal.”
The company’s lawyers argue the three former employees are not named parties to the litigation and the information, if made public, could lead to “unwarranted reputational injury.”
An attorney for plaintiffs said they will contest Nike’s motion to keep certain records sealed.
“We are still processing Nike’s lengthy brief, but it is striking that the key information Nike wants to seal is the impact numbers,” plaintiffs’ attorney Laura Salerno Owens wrote in an email to Insider. “Impact numbers do not reveal what any particular employee made, it just shows the aggregated percentages or pay difference—not specific pay amounts. The public and potential class members have a right to know the impact of Nike’s pay practices on thousands of women in Oregon.”
An attorney for Nike declined comment on the motion.
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