Legal Protections

We do not share reviewer identity with employers — under any circumstances, including a direct request, a legal threat, or a formal dispute filed by the employer. The only exceptions are a valid court order or a subpoena we are legally compelled to comply with (see Section 3).

Technically, this means:

• Your name, email, and BACB certification number are stored separately from your review content.
• Published reviews display only your credential type (e.g., "BCBA"), tenure range, and service setting — never your name, email, or cert number.
• Employer accounts have no access to reviewer identity data — not in the dashboard, not via our API.
• We maintain an internal audit log of every administrative access to credential data.

If an employer contacts us demanding to know who wrote a review, we will decline and, if the request involves a legal threat, we will notify you so you can seek legal advice.

Reviews on Verified ABA are professional opinions based on firsthand workplace experience. Under well-established U.S. law, opinions cannot form the basis of a defamation claim. The First Amendment broadly protects the right to share professional assessments, workplace experiences, and consumer reviews.

Courts have specifically recognized that online reviews of businesses — including negative ones — are protected speech when they reflect genuine experience and are clearly stated as opinion rather than verifiable fact. Our moderation process (Section 4) filters out content that crosses the line from opinion into unverifiable factual accusation.

Many states also have anti-SLAPP statutes (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) that allow defendants to quickly dismiss lawsuits filed to silence legitimate public speech and recover attorney fees. If you receive a legal threat, we encourage you to consult a lawyer and reference your state's anti-SLAPP law.

Courts can compel platforms to produce user information through a valid subpoena or court order. Here is exactly what we do when that happens:

1. We scrutinize the request. We will not comply with informal demands, threatening letters, or subpoenas that appear legally deficient. We require proper legal process.
2. We challenge where we can. We will make reasonable good-faith efforts to challenge a subpoena before complying — including asserting the First Amendment and procedural standards established in Dendrite International, Inc. v. Doe No. 3 (N.J. 2001) and Doe v. Cahill (Del. 2005), which require a plaintiff to present a real factual basis before a reviewer's identity may be disclosed.
3. We notify you. Unless we are legally prohibited from doing so (e.g., by a gag order), we will notify the affected reviewer that a subpoena has been served. This gives you time to retain counsel and assert your own objections before we are required to respond.
4. We produce only what is legally required. We will not volunteer information beyond what the legal process specifically compels.

See our Legal Process Policy for full detail. Legal process requests should be directed to legal@verifiedaba.com.

Our moderation process is designed to protect both reviewers and employers. Before any review is published, it passes through:

• Automated scans for PHI (protected health information) and de-anonymization risk
• Ethics-language detection for content that requires admin attention
• Statistical outlier detection to flag reviews inconsistent with the employer's history
• Manual review by the founder for every submission before it publishes

We reject reviews that make unverifiable accusations of illegal activity. This protects reviewers from publishing content that could expose them to defamation claims and keeps the platform's credibility intact. Reviews that contain specific legal accusations (fraud, criminal conduct) are held and the submitter is asked to rephrase as professional observations rather than legal conclusions.

Statements like "I was pressured to document time I did not work" are professional observations. Statements like "The company committed Medicaid fraud" are legal conclusions — we will ask you to rephrase those before publishing.

See our Community Guidelines and Moderation Policy for the full framework.

Some BCBAs have asked whether submitting an employer review could violate the BACB Ethics Code or result in a disciplinary action. The answer is no — for two reasons.

First, the BACB Ethics Code does not regulate what BCBAs say about employers. The code governs professional conduct with clients, supervisees, and other professionals — not workplace speech or consumer reviews. Sharing your professional experience of an employer's clinical practices is not within the scope of the ethics code.

Second, your review is anonymous. It is published without your name, credential number, or any identifying information. There is no mechanism by which a BACB ethics complaint could be linked to an anonymous review you submitted on this platform, absent a court-ordered disclosure of your identity (Section 3).

If you have a specific concern about BACB ethics, our review process ensures that content is framed as professional clinical assessment — not personal grievance or legal accusation. That framing is consistent with the kind of professional discourse the BACB encourages.

Questions about reviewer protections may be directed to legal@verifiedaba.com. We will respond within 3 business days.

If you are experiencing an active legal threat related to a review you submitted, contact us immediately at that address and include "URGENT — Legal Threat" in the subject line.