This story was produced in partnership with the Springboard Undertaking at Sort Investigations. 

Like several govt, every time Gov. Jeff Landry decides, opinions laws, weighs a coverage proposal, or schedules a gathering with an organization his administration hopes to persuade to arrange store in Louisiana, there’s a staff of individuals behind him.

Chiefs of workers advise and handle the movement of data. Press secretaries management the message. Legal professionals navigate authorized questions. Regional administrators implement insurance policies throughout the state. Interns and pupil staff fill in across the edges, reducing their tooth on authorities work.

However in an obvious break from the earlier administration in Louisiana, at the least 121 of Landry’s staff — from essentially the most senior aides to essentially the most junior temps — have signed a strict confidentiality settlement with the governor’s workplace binding them to secrecy about what they study on the job, data obtained by the Gulf States Newsroom and Sort Investigations present.

Prime aides, together with former Chief of Employees Kyle Ruckert, Govt Counsel Angelique Freel, and deputy chief of workers for communications Kate Kelly all signed, together with state company heads, regional administrators, press secretaries, and members of the primary girl’s administration. Even a deputy govt counsel chargeable for the governor’s workplace’s public data requests who supplied the data for this story signed one.

A number of different senior officers who’re not working on the governor’s workplace additionally signed a nondisclosure settlement (NDA), together with Millard Mule, Landry’s former coverage director, who left the administration in January 2026 to start out a personal consulting agency.

Considered one of Mule’s lobbying purchasers is Meta, the tech firm creating a $50 billion knowledge middle campus in Richland Parish. Landry personally signed an NDA with the corporate’s knowledge middle subsidiary in April 2024, based on data obtained by the Gulf States Newsroom and Sort Investigations.

Information present Landry personally executed a “Mutual Non-Disclosure Settlement” in April 2024 with Laidley LLC, the info middle subsidiary of Meta Platforms.

Workers may be fired or sued — even after leaving state authorities — for violating the governor’s workplace NDAs. The paperwork’ broad language might embody discussing inside deliberations with a former colleague, confirming a coverage element to a reporter, or answering a lawmaker’s query with out the governor’s log off.

Authorized consultants and former senior aides of the governor’s workplace warn that the NDAs might create a tradition of concern and chill staff’ constitutionally protected speech.

The doc quantities to “principally a gag order,” stated Eric Holl, a prime adviser to former Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards who reviewed an settlement on the request of the Gulf States Newsroom and Sort Investigations.

“I don’t see this getting used as something apart from a software of intimidation and management.”

Using confidentiality agreements in Landry’s workplace is the most recent instance of an increasing secrecy equipment taking maintain throughout Louisiana underneath his administration. Since taking workplace in January 2024, Landry has moved on a number of fronts to restrict public scrutiny of his administration.

He signed a legislation permitting officers to disregard public data requests with none penalties. His senior aides — together with a number of who signed the governor’s workplace NDAs — had their residence addresses scrubbed from monetary disclosure varieties required by state legislation. And NDAs with elected officers at the moment are customary process for Louisiana Financial Growth (LED), the state company tasked with attracting companies to the state, because the Gulf States Newsroom and Sort Investigations revealed in March.

Landry’s workplace didn’t reply to direct questions in regards to the agreements. In an announcement, Freel, Landry’s govt counsel described the NDAs as a great governance effort to forestall staff from sharing delicate info with lobbyists or different personal events not coated by the state’s ethics legal guidelines.

The confidentiality settlement “protects each the integrity of the Governor’s determination making, in addition to public belief,” Freel wrote. The agreements are additionally meant to maintain staff from releasing any data the workplace shouldn’t be strictly required to make obtainable underneath the state’s public data legislation.

“Voluntary disclosure of protected info by a person worker can waive an otherwise-valid exemption or privilege,” Freel added, and requiring staff to undergo licensed channels ensures that the workplace’s data custodian “decides what’s launched and what’s correctly withheld.”

‘A tradition of concern’

The equivalent agreements, titled “Worker Confidentiality Settlement — Workplace of the Governor,” outline “Confidential Info” as “info of any nature by any means” acquired via employment — explicitly together with the governor’s deliberative course of; legislative privilege; attorney-client privilege; and authorized, administrative, safety, monetary and personnel issues.

Workers who signal agree to not disclose the knowledge “both instantly or not directly” with out the governor’s prior written consent, and decide to signing further, unspecified agreements every time the governor’s workplace requests them. The restrictions survive their departure from state authorities indefinitely — binding a former intern to the identical silence as a former chief of workers, for the remainder of their lives.

Bruce Hamilton, director of the First Modification Clinic at Tulane Legislation College, reviewed the settlement and stated its definition of confidential info has such a “breathtakingly overbroad scope” it turns into successfully meaningless.

“I’d say it goes far past defending ‘confidential info’ and as a substitute stifles and chills the speech of any worker compelled to signal it,” Hamilton stated.

Hamilton described a number of of the NDA’s different provisions as unnecessarily punitive and doubtlessly legally unenforceable, together with the prohibition on “not directly” divulging info and the clause committing staff to signal future agreements. The indefinite nature of the NDA’s restrictions can also be problematic, he stated.

“It successfully chills speech round an enormous, ill-defined space — a limiteless group of subjects and data — perpetually,” he stated. “I see that as a extreme infringement on free-speech rights that’s seemingly unconstitutional.”

Three former senior officers who served underneath Edwards, whose administration instantly preceded Landry’s, instructed the Gulf States Newsroom and Sort Investigations that they didn’t see the apply getting used throughout Edwards’ eight years in workplace. (The Louisiana State Archives, which maintains data from prior administrations, was unable to finish a search of the Edwards archive in time for publication.)

“I by no means noticed or heard of anybody signal a non-disclosure settlement once I was working for Governor Edwards,” stated Mark Cooper, who served as chief of workers for many of Edwards’ two phrases. Whereas Cooper stated he wasn’t concerned in each authorized determination made by the workplace, he wasn’t conscious of staff being required to signal confidentiality agreements.

Matthew Block, Edwards’ govt counsel till 2022, equally stated he by no means signed an NDA and wasn’t conscious of anybody else within the governor’s workplace doing so.

Holl, who was deputy chief of workers over communications for the final two years of the Edwards administration, attributed the absence of confidentiality agreements throughout his tenure to a “tradition of belief” throughout the workplace quite than any coverage determination. Employees exercised discretion round delicate subjects, he stated, together with ongoing legislative negotiations and financial improvement talks, while not having a signed settlement to implement it.

“It was by no means, ‘You higher not be on the market speaking about X, Y and Z, or I’m going to have your ass,’” he stated. “It was at all times, all people understood when one thing was delicate.”

Holl reviewed an settlement signed by Kate Kelly, whose position as Landry’s deputy chief of workers for communications is identical job he held underneath Edwards. He highlighted language requiring the governor to personally authorize, in writing, any disclosure of data “acquired or identified” by working within the governor’s workplace. That wording, he stated, covers “every part.”

“It will have been inconceivable for me to do my job and cling to an settlement like this,” Holl stated.

Holl stated he has no direct data of how Landry’s workplace at the moment operates and might’t converse to the administration’s motives for requiring the agreements. However he questions why any governor’s workplace would want one in any respect.

“The one cause to have of us signal an settlement like that is to create a tradition of concern,” Holl stated. “And also you don’t have any cause to make your individual workers afraid of you should you’re serving the state actually and legally and treating your workers with primary decency.”

The governor’s directive

The governor’s workplace is now the second state company underneath Landry identified to routinely require NDAs.

The Gulf States Newsroom and Sort Investigations first reported that at the least 50 elected officers signed nondisclosure agreements with LED, from the time Landry took workplace till December 2025.

As of June, that tally has risen to at the least 54 elected officers, based on further agreements obtained from LED. The leaders of each legislative chambers have signed NDAs, together with 77% of your complete Louisiana Senate and 13% of the Louisiana Home, based on a Gulf States Newsroom and Sort Investigations evaluation of the data.

State officers who defend LED’s NDA’s say they permit lawmakers to overview delicate negotiations earlier than they grow to be public. And the scope of these agreements are sometimes narrower than those issued by the governor’s workplace.

LED has used NDAs underneath governors of each events for many years, the company’s spokesperson Emma Wagner wrote in an announcement. Landry, nonetheless, has expanded their use to carry legislators, native officers, and different state businesses into challenge discussions earlier within the course of.

LED Secretary Susan Bourgeois instructed the Gulf States Newsroom that LED makes use of a mixture of “common” and project-specific NDAs. Some are tied to a single deal and expire at announcement. Others are broader, “extra blanketed” agreements protecting any LED challenge a lawmaker may be concerned in, which might final their whole time period in workplace.

When an organization like Meta prefers its personal authorized phrases, Bourgeois added, it could use its personal NDAs. And a few officers signal confidentiality agreements with a number of entities.

Information present that Elizabeth Crochet, Landry’s press secretary, signed an NDA with the governor’s workplace in addition to a second one with Meta, which is constructing its largest-ever knowledge middle in Louisiana. The Meta settlement bars Crochet from “confirming or commenting on any info, public or in any other case, regarding Meta or its enterprise” with out the corporate’s prior written permission.

Ryan Daniels, public affairs supervisor at Meta, wrote in an announcement that confidentiality agreements are a typical a part of aggressive website choice and are meant to forestall hypothesis about tasks which will by no means materialize.

Daniels stated the corporate doesn’t prohibit public officers from disclosing the place a knowledge middle can be situated or discussing its environmental impacts as soon as tasks advance, and that it really works intently with state and native officers on permits, tax agreements, and different approvals.

However based on the paperwork’ language, by signing each agreements, Crochet would want written approval from each Landry himself and Meta, a trillion-dollar personal tech firm, with a purpose to talk about something associated to the corporate, together with its ongoing knowledge middle challenge.

In line with the corporate’s settlement, Crochet, who didn’t reply to questions for this story, can’t even verify she signed an NDA with Meta — or that discussions had been occurring in any respect.

Landry entered right into a confidentiality settlement of his personal. Partially redacted data present the governor personally signed a mutual NDA, efficient April 23, 2024, on behalf of the “Workplace of the Governor” with an LLC. LED launched the doc in response to a request for data involving Meta or Laidley LLC, Meta’s knowledge middle subsidiary.

The mutual settlement binds either side: It bars both get together from making “any public announcement or different disclosures” associated to the settlement or their discussions — together with to reporters, blogs, commerce organizations, or “some other public viewers” — with out the opposite’s prior written approval.

Sophia Anderson contributed knowledge visualization for this investigation. This story was produced by the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between Mississippi Public Broadcasting, WBHM in Alabama, WWNO and WRKF in Louisiana and NPR.

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