Taryn Asher, the 51-year-old anchor Fox 2 Detroit pulled off the air in 2025, can start shopping herself to other newsrooms again. Lawyers on both sides filed a stipulated order in federal court on Monday, September 14, 2026, retiring the fight over the non-compete clause in her contract, while her discrimination suit against her former employer grinds forward.
The two sides agreed to drop the issue “based upon the parties’ resolution of this issue,” the order says. The document therefore records a settlement between them, not a ruling in her favor, and a judge has yet to sign off on it. The broader case continues.
Asher came to WJBK in 2007, collected 10 local Emmy Awards at the station and took over as lead anchor of the evening news in 2022 alongside co-anchor Roop Raj. Station managers pulled her off the air on November 21, 2025; she never returned, and the paychecks continued for a stretch afterward, with her contract running to June 6, 2026. Her complaint, filed in June 2026, alleges gender discrimination and retaliation, and it accuses executives of removing her because they favored her male co-anchor.
Dueling Accounts of an Anchor’s Exit
Fox 2 executives tell a different story. Their own filing argued her firing was justified by “unprofessional behavior,” and the conduct they described included shouting at newsroom colleagues. The station took a different view of the non-compete as well, arguing the clause should have started running when her contract expired in June, not when she left the air seven months earlier.
Those seven months make up the whole of the dispute now settled. The clause barred Asher from media work for six months, and on Fox 2’s reading — with the clock starting at her June 6, 2026, contract expiry — it would have kept her off the air until early December 2026. The station kept her on the payroll for a period after November while she sat out, and the later the start date, the longer she would stay off a competitor’s air. Her lawyers went into federal court to break it, and the stipulated order closes the argument without a judge ruling on who had it right.
Asher’s agent, Mort Meisner, told Deadline Detroit on September 15: “We’re pleased that this matter is now off the table,” 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.”
Meisner also described what the clause had done to her job hunt: “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 added: “Taryn does not want to leave Detroit.” Meisner told the Detroit News she is considering work in podcasting.
A leaked video surfaced about a month before the resolution, showing Asher calling a superior a vulgar name. The agreement, for now, hands her the one thing an out-of-work anchor needs most: the freedom to audition elsewhere while the litigation plays out.
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 departure has curdled into a public dispute, this one at a different arm of the company. On Thursday, September 3, Fox News Media announced it had parted ways with host Maria Bartiromo after 12 and a half years, thanked her and gave no reason for the split.
Within hours her name was gone from the schedule. The next day, “Mornings with Maria” became “Mornings with Fox Business” and “Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street” became “FBN’s Wall Street,” both with rotating anchors. Jason Chaffetz took “Sunday Morning Futures” that weekend, and no permanent host has been named.
Bartiromo’s attorney disputes the premise. On September 4, Bryan Freedman said reports that she had been fired or was no longer a Fox employee were “absolutely and unequivocally false.” He added: “We have the receipts and witnesses and they will come out whether through the courthouse or otherwise.” Freedman has produced no proof, however, and he has filed nothing; no suit has been docketed. Neither side has explained what ended the relationship.
Investigators of the split have partly corroborated one account. A person with knowledge of events told NPR that Bartiromo passed Fox’s internal guidance to the Trump White House. The text came from Fox Business programming chief Ralph Giordano and told 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. On Newsmax, Peter Navarro said the screenshot reached him from her, and that the White House called Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott about it. Sources said the leak was “not the only reason.”
The Legal Shadow Over the Network
Her 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. Both sides have moved for summary judgment in the Smartmatic case, but the judge has yet to rule and no trial date is set. Trump, who appointed her to the Kennedy Center board, called her “a total professional, and a true warrior.”
Several Fox figures tied to that coverage left before her. A day after Smartmatic sued in early 2021, Lou Dobbs lost his job; he has since died. Fox pushed out Tucker Carlson in April 2023, six days after the Dominion settlement. Jeanine Pirro, named U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., in 2025, is a defendant in both voting-machine cases.
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 one Detroit station. Her discrimination and retaliation claims remain unresolved, as does the station’s insistence that it had cause.
