A Texas court has set aside the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) Final Rule banning almost all non-compete clauses days before it was set to take effect on Sept. 4. Ryan LLC v. FTC, No. 3:24-CV-00986-E, 2024 U.S. Dist....more
8/30/2024
/ Federal Bans ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Final Rules ,
Florida ,
FTC Act ,
Injunctions ,
Injunctive Relief ,
Lack of Authority ,
Non-Compete Agreements ,
Preliminary Injunctions ,
Restrictive Covenants ,
Statutory Authority ,
Texas ,
Unfair Competition
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has signed the “Fair Contracting for Health Care Practitioners Act” (House Bill 1633), which restricts the ability of employers and healthcare practitioners to enter into non-compete...more
On July 3, 2024, as anticipated, U.S. District Judge Ada Brown of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas granted Plaintiffs’ and Plaintiff-Intervenors’ motion to stay and preliminarily enjoin the effective...more
Maryland is following a nationwide trend restricting non-competition agreements for medical professionals. Maryland House Bill (HB) 1388 voids all non-compete and conflict of interest provisions in employment contracts for...more
On April 23, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued its final rule prohibiting all non-compete agreements for all employees at all levels, with only extremely limited exceptions. The FTC’s much-anticipated action...more
Maine Governor Janet Mills has vetoed legislation that would have severely restricted the contexts in which Maine employers could use and enforce non-compete agreements. The bill, LD 1496, would have significantly hampered...more
Stemming a tide of Delaware decisions closely scrutinizing and refusing to enforce non-compete agreements, Delaware’s Supreme Court held that forfeiture-for-competition provisions arising out of a Delaware limited partnership...more
New York Governor Kathy Hochul vetoed Senate Bill S3100A, a bill passed by both houses of the legislature in June, that would prohibit all non-compete agreements. This is a significant and interesting end to a year of...more
California’s Governor signed Assembly Bill (AB) 1076 on October 13, 2023, which adds new Business & Professions Code §16600.1, making it unlawful to impose non-compete clauses on employees – which contractual restrictions...more
On September 1, 2023, Governor Newsom signed Senate Bill (SB) 699, which buttresses current state law that voids contracts that restrain an employee from engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind....more
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has proposed a paradigm-breaking rule that would ban essentially all non-compete agreements. If enacted, this rule would purport to override tens of millions of contracts in every sector of...more
2/8/2023
/ Antitrust Division ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Employment Contract ,
Executive Orders ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
FTC Act ,
Joe Biden ,
Non-Compete Agreements ,
Popular ,
Restrictive Covenants ,
Unfair Competition
A bipartisan group of U.S. Senators has reintroduced a bill, dubbed the “Workforce Mobility Act of 2023,” that would largely ban the use of employer non-compete agreements nationwide as a matter of federal law. This follows...more
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to broadly ban the use of non-compete covenants throughout the country.
The proposed rule, which would supersede all contrary state laws, is...more
Breathing new life into “uniqueness” (of an employee’s services) as a legitimate business interest supporting enforcement of non-competition covenants under New York law, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit...more
There have been whispers of federal regulation of non-compete agreements for years. Multiple bipartisan bills aiming to ban non-competes have fallen to the wayside without traction. The Federal Trade Commission hosted a...more
The District of Columbia appears poised to join the growing number of nearby states regulating and limiting restrictive covenant agreements in the employment context...more
On August 26, 2019, the Delaware Chancery Court invalidated a California employee’s customer and employee non-solicitation covenant on the grounds that it violated California law. In doing so, the Court rejected the plaintiff...more
After enacting its non-compete law on April 7, 2016, Utah has twice amended the law to address additional restrictions on non-competes in the broadcasting industry. Governor Gary Herbert signed the second of those amended...more
Earlier this month, a group of six United States Senators made a joint request for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate the impact of non-compete agreements on workers and the U.S. economy as a whole....more
When implementing restrictive covenant agreements in their workforces, companies often grapple with how best to handle the wide variation in the law from one state to the other. One solution is to include a choice of law...more
In the past week, two states have made modifications to their respective non-compete laws. On March 27, 2018, Utah imposed special restrictions on the use of non-compete agreements in the broadcasting industry. One day...more
The Massachusetts Legislature, after a decade of attempts, may pass restrictions on the use of non-compete covenants in the Commonwealth.
The co-chairmen of the Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development, Senator...more
In the fourth quarter of 2017, two major financial firms dropped out of an industry-wide Protocol for Broker Recruiting (the “Protocol”), an agreement designed to reduce litigation surrounding the movement of stockbrokers...more
The Massachusetts Legislature has spent the past several years seeking to regulate the use of restrictive covenant agreements in the Commonwealth. Despite repeatedly falling short in that initiative, the 2017 legislative...more
A bill in the New Jersey Senate, Senate Bill 3518 (“SB 3518”), and an identical companion bill in the New Jersey Assembly (Assembly Bill 5261), would significantly curtail the use of non-compete agreements in New Jersey. In...more