Taryn Asher can start job-hunting again. The 51-year-old anchor, pulled off the air at Fox 2 Detroit in 2025, is free to pursue work at another newsroom while her discrimination suit against her former employer grinds forward, under a stipulated order filed in federal court on Monday, September 14, 2026.

The non-compete clause in her contract will no longer be litigated: Lawyers on both sides, for Asher and for the station, agreed to drop that fight, telling the court the filing came “based upon the parties’ resolution of this issue.” The outcome amounts to a settlement between the two sides rather than a ruling in her favor. A judge has still to sign off on it, and the broader case continues.

WJBK hired Asher in 2007, and she went on to win 10 local Emmy Awards at the station and take over the evening news as lead anchor in 2022 alongside co-anchor Roop Raj. Management pulled her off the air on November 21, 2025; she never returned and was paid for a stretch afterward, with her contract running to June 6, 2026. Gender discrimination and retaliation are the claims in her complaint, filed in June 2026, which accuses executives of removing her because they favored her male co-anchor.

Dueling Accounts of an Anchor’s Exit

Fox 2 executives describe the exit differently. In their own filing, they argued her firing was justified by “unprofessional behavior,” conduct they said included shouting at colleagues in the newsroom. The station argued on the non-compete that the clock on the clause should have begun at her contract’s expiration in June, rather than seven months earlier when she left the air.

The whole dispute came down to that gap. The clause barred Asher from media work for six months, and under Fox 2’s reading — with the clock starting at her June 6, 2026 contract expiry — she would have been kept off the air until early December 2026. Her agent, Mort Meisner, told the Detroit News that she is considering work in podcasting. Because the station kept paying her after November while she sat out, a later start date for the clause meant a longer wait before she could appear on a competitor’s air. Her legal team took the question to federal court to break the clause, and the stipulated order closes the argument with no judge ruling on which reading was correct.

“We’re pleased that this matter is now off the table,” Meisner told Deadline Detroit in comments published September 15, adding, “Taryn has nearly 30 years of tremendous journalistic success and ratings success, and specifically at WJBK Fox 2. So we really see this as a victory because she has a family to support and this allows her the opportunity to get paid.”

“We’ve had some discussions in both in mainstream media and non-mainstream media and we really have had to say, ‘we gotta wait’ because there was a contract in place and this matter was part of it. Now this matter is no longer part of it,” he said. He added: “Taryn does not want to leave Detroit.”

A leaked video surfaced about a month before the resolution, showing Asher calling a superior a vulgar name. The agreement, for now, hands her what an out-of-work anchor needs most — she can audition elsewhere while the litigation runs its course.

Her attorney, Tad Roumayah, told the Detroit Free Press that his client is “actively pursuing opportunities in the industry, and she hopes to stay in Detroit, a community she has cherished and where she has developed meaningful connections with viewers and fans over the years.”

A Rocky Stretch for Fox Talent

Another Fox personality has seen a departure turn into a public dispute, and Asher is not alone in that, though the other case is playing out at a different arm of the company. Host Maria Bartiromo was let go after 12 and a half years, Fox News Media announced on Thursday, September 3. The statement thanked her and offered no explanation.

Within hours, her name was off the schedule. The next day “Mornings with Maria” became “Mornings with Fox Business” and “Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street” became “FBN’s Wall Street,” with rotating anchors. Jason Chaffetz took “Sunday Morning Futures” over that weekend, and no permanent host has been named since. Her attorney disputes the premise, and reports that she had been fired or was no longer a Fox employee were “absolutely and unequivocally false,” Bryan Freedman said on September 4. He added: “We have the receipts and witnesses and they will come out whether through the courthouse or otherwise.” No proof has come from Freedman and nothing has been filed; no suit has been docketed.

Why the relationship ended remains unexplained by either side. Neither has addressed it, though one account has been partly corroborated. Bartiromo passed Fox’s internal guidance to the Trump White House, a person with knowledge of events told NPR. That guidance was a text from Fox Business programming chief Ralph Giordano telling producers not to give oxygen to President Donald Trump’s July 16 primetime address, which made unproven claims that China interfered in the 2020 election; Giordano sent it the day before the speech. The screenshot came to him from her, and the White House then called Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott about it, Peter Navarro said on Newsmax. Sources said the leak was “not the only reason.”

The Legal Shadow Over the Network

Bartiromo’s programs are stitched into Fox’s costliest courtroom saga. Dominion Voting Systems sued in 2021 over on-air claims that it had rigged the 2020 election; Smartmatic, which is seeking $2.7 billion, sued the same year and names her as a defendant. Fox settled the Dominion case for $787.5 million in 2023 as the trial was to begin. In the Smartmatic case, both sides have moved for summary judgment, the judge has not ruled and no trial date is set. Trump, who appointed her to the Kennedy Center board, called her “a total professional, and a true warrior.”

She is the latest of several Fox figures tied to that coverage to leave. Lou Dobbs, who has since died, lost his job a day after Smartmatic sued in early 2021. Tucker Carlson was pushed out in April 2023, six days after the Dominion settlement. Jeanine Pirro, a defendant in both voting-machine cases, was named U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., in 2025.

Asher’s stakes are smaller and more immediate. The settlement lifts the contractual barrier that kept her from signing with a competitor, a practical win for a broadcaster who spent 19 years at a single Detroit station. Her discrimination and retaliation claims remain unresolved, as does the station’s insistence that it had cause.