Judge rules former Facebook exec and author can’t promote tell-all

Author Sarah Wynn-Williams of the bestselling memoir "Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism" must continue arbitration with Meta.OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) — A federal judge denied Friday a former Facebook employee allowance to publicize her memoir detailing her experiences at the tech behemoth under a severance agreement that prohibits her from promoting the book and compels her into arbitration.In March 2025, Sarah Wynn-Williams released her memoir, “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism,” detailing her time as a company lawyer beginning in 2011 and her rise to director of global public policy. She claims she experienced repeated sexual harassment by executives but did not report it for fear of retaliation. Wynn-Williams was fired after a Facebook investigation found the employees had not engaged in misconduct.After the book’s publication, Meta initiated arbitration, saying her disclosure of sexual harassment violated her severance agreement. After Meta failed to block the book’s publication, Wynn-Williams said an emergency arbitrator’s broad “interim award” limited her speech and ability to work and allowed Meta to monitor and penalize her actions regardless of their connection to the book.Wynn-Williams challenged the interim award and filed a counter-demand in arbitration, claiming Meta breached the severance agreement by disparaging her. While her court challenges to arbitration continued over the next two years, both sides continued settlement talks and arbitration.U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín denied Wynn-Williams’s motion to vacate the interim award, saying, “In general, mid-arbitration intervention is disfavored.”Additionally, the Joe Biden appointee denied Wynn-Williams’s motion for a preliminary injunction to halt arbitration.“Meta argues that Wynn-Williams has waived the right to object to the threshold issue of arbitrability by participating in the arbitration for some 15 months and receiving adverse rulings before bringing this lawsuit in district court,” Martínez-Olguín wrote in her 21-page ruling.“Considered in its totality, Wynn-Williams’s participation in the arbitration for over 15 months prior to initiating this lawsuit can readily be viewed as a series of acts inconsistent with the right to proceed in another forum. Wynn-Williams fights this conclusion, asserting that she has objected to the arbitrability of this dispute from its earliest moments and preserved that objection at every step. Review of the record shows that her objection to proceeding through arbitration was neither as clear nor as consistent as she contends.”Martínez-Olguín granted Meta’s motion to compel arbitration and stayed the case.Wynn-Williams also claims she witnessed Facebook’s failure to invest in staff and resources, which may have increased tensions in Myanmar, and Zuckerberg’s “readiness to hand the Chinese Communist Party access to the data of millions of Chinese and U.S. citizens as a quid pro quo for entry to the Chinese market.”After Wynn-Williams filed her complaint in June, a Meta spokesperson said she was using the legal process “to sell books, which an arbitrator already ruled broke the agreement she signed with the company when she accepted a large severance payment years ago.”Wynn-Williams received $780,000 under the settlement agreement.Attorneys representing Wynn-Williams and Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads