[margalabargala]

It's not at all a legal grey area.

If it was, people fired or laid off and not offered severance would have standing to sue.

They don't.

Calling it a legal grey area is like calling vaccines a medical/scientific grey area. Or calling perpetual motion machines a physics grey area.

[alterom]

You could say the same thing about the right to abortion access in the US until Roe vs. Wade was overturned (or equivalently, before Roe vs. Wade).

Comparisons to physics are unwarranted.

Laws change, and they are interpreted when applied. Very few things are black-and-white to begin with, and legality of non-disparagement clauses is one of them.

[margalabargala]

Yes, we agree on how the legal system works. Should existing laws be reinterpreted or new laws passed such that severance is treated as compensation for work already performed, then the arguments you've been making will begin to hold merit.

Until then, statements building from "severance is compensation for past labor" are imagined theories about a hypothetical reality with different laws than the world we live in.

[alterom]

>Yes, we agree on how the legal system works

Indeed. It's also clear from the article.

Laws don't describe reality though. Severance is compensation for past labor in the real world, just not from a legal standpoint in the US.

In the same vein, I didn't purchase psychedelic mushrooms; I merely made a donation to the institution that subsequently dispensed them to me as a religious sacrament.

From a legal standpoint, it wasn't a sale.

From any other perspective grounded in reality, it was.

[margalabargala]

> Laws don't describe reality though. Severance is compensation for past labor in the real world, just not from a legal standpoint in the US.

Ah, the "I'm right, it's the world that's wrong!" argument.

> In the same vein, I didn't purchase psychedelic mushrooms; I merely made a donation to the institution that subsequently dispensed them to me as a religious sacrament. From a legal standpoint, it wasn't a sale.

There's actually some pretty strict laws surrounding donations and gifts to prevent exactly this. You haven't found some legal loophole, you've just reinvented tax evasion and fraud.

You're at least consistent in the amount you know about sales law and severance pay.

[alterom]

>Ah, the "I'm right, it's the world that's wrong!" argument.

Not the world. A particular small component of the US legislation.

It's amusing that you don't understand the difference between the two.

>You haven't found some legal loophole, you've just reinvented tax evasion and fraud.

I didn't invent anything. I'm telling you of a real-world experience I've had in Zide Door Church in Oakland, CA[1], at one of the few places in the US where you can get psychedelic mushrooms legally.

That place is still there, and has been for years; it is operating legally, with a permit.

>You're at least consistent in the amount you know about sales law and severance pay.

How ironic. Both the sale of psychedelic mushrooms (within the legal framework of religious rights) and the "non disparagement" extortion (within the legal framework of contact law) are, very clearly, legal, on the account of both taking place in the open and persisting through legal challenges.

Yet you don't see them the same way, and call the first practice "tax evasion and fraud".

What gives? By your logic, you'd be illiterate to say so, given how it's been established to be legal.

Talk about consistency, huh.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2026/02/19/nx-s1-5718389/psychedelic-rel...