No contract can force you to do something illegal. The contract would be considered invalid and unenforceable. Likewise no contract can force you to surrender bodily autonomy. In the situations you gave you could simply walk away and if the company attempted to enforce the contract via the courts the contract would be invalidated.
The worst that could happen is if you’d received something for signing the contract you would be expected to return it.
There is a rule about contracts is that they can’t be “unconscionable” which is a fancy word to say that they can’t be so unjust or against what is right.
Please note though what is and isn’t unconscionable varies place to place. So if you lived in a place that had legal prostitution it may be possible to have a contract that requires you to give a BJ.
Some contract provisions are legally unenforceable. That (usually) means that the parts of the contract that are independent of that section continue to apply, but the parts that depend on it are all invalid. If there’s a dispute about whether some part of the contract depends on an unenforceable section, the court will evaluate it and determine what is legally required.
A provision being unenforceable can be simply a matter of common sense (e.g. a contract that requires you to commit a murder is by definition unenforceable), or it can be an official matter of law, e.g. New York state has laws against certain kinds of non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with regard to sexual assault or sexual harassment, meaning any such provision is inherently void regardless.
Latest Answers