Taryn Asher, the 51-year-old anchor who was taken off the air at Fox 2 Detroit in 2025, has won the right to chase a job at another newsroom while her discrimination lawsuit against her former employer grinds forward.
Attorneys for Asher and Fox 2 Detroit settled the question of the non-compete clause in her contract, freeing her to pursue work at rival outlets. The agreement does not end the broader fight: her suit against her former bosses at the Detroit station remains ongoing.
Asher joined the station in 2007 and took over the evening news in 2022, a run that ended when she was pulled off the air in 2025. Her complaint, filed in June 2026, alleges gender discrimination and retaliation, and accuses network executives of suspending her out of favoritism toward her male co-anchor.
Dueling Accounts of an Anchor’s Exit
Fox 2 executives tell a very different story. In their own filing, they contended that her firing was justified by “unprofessional behavior,” conduct they said included shouting at newsroom colleagues.
About a month before the resolution, a leaked video showed Asher calling her superior a vulgar name. The non-compete deal followed, and for now it hands her the one thing an out-of-work anchor needs most — the freedom to audition elsewhere while the litigation plays out.
A Rocky Stretch for Fox Talent
Asher is not the only Fox personality whose departure has turned into a public dispute. On Thursday, September 3, 2026, Fox News Media announced that it had parted ways with Maria Bartiromo, the longtime Fox Business anchor, offering no further details or context.
The next day, Bryan Freedman, Bartiromo’s attorney, said she had not been fired and remained a Fox employee, rejecting reports to the contrary. “Make no mistake, we have the receipts and witnesses and they will come out whether through the courthouse or otherwise,” Freedman said on September 4.
The signals inside the building pointed the other way. The final episode of Bartiromo’s daily Fox Business show aired September 3, and the following day those same time slots returned under unchanged titles and graphics, her name stripped out. Her bio and show pages disappeared from Fox’s websites immediately after the Thursday announcement. Bartiromo has rejected the firing label, saying her contract is still in force, even as the network proceeds as though a severance has occurred.
Bartiromo joined Fox Business in 2014 and served as its global markets editor. Her lineup included the weekday program “Mornings with Maria,” the Friday show “Maria Bartiromo’s Wall Street” and “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News Channel. She came to Fox from CNBC, where she spent 21 years and hosted “Closing Bell.”
Media industry reporting tied her exit to a specific breach: that she passed along to the White House guidance from Fox management about claims President Donald Trump has made regarding recent elections. Those accounts remain unverified. The backdrop, according to that reporting, was a prime-time speech Trump delivered in July 2026 airing new conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, after which Fox News executives issued an internal directive telling top staffers to steer clear of the president’s new round of claims.
The Legal Shadow Over the Network
Bartiromo’s name is already stitched into Fox’s costliest courtroom saga. In 2021, her comments and programs were cited as exhibits in the defamation lawsuit Dominion Voting Systems brought against Fox News, a case built on the accusation that the network knowingly aired false claims that the company had rigged the 2020 presidential election. Fox agreed to pay $787 million to settle in 2023. Smartmatic, another voting technology firm, sued Fox in 2021 and named Bartiromo as a co-defendant; that case was still ongoing as of September 4.
Her ties to the president extend beyond the airwaves. Trump handed Bartiromo a seat on the governing board of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, and the center’s website still listed her as a board member as of the afternoon of September 4. Two other Fox News personalities tied to the Dominion litigation, Lou Dobbs and Tucker Carlson, were fired in recent years, and a third defendant in that case, Jeanine Pirro, left the network to work for the Trump administration.
For Asher, the stakes are far more immediate. The non-compete resolution lifts the contractual barrier that kept her from signing with a competing outlet, a practical victory for a broadcaster who spent years at a single Detroit station. Her gender discrimination and retaliation claims against Fox 2 Detroit, and the station’s insistence that her firing was justified, remain unresolved.
