If you attended the latest State of Employment Law webinar Bill Nolan and I presented (and, if you didn’t, it’s not too late to keep an eye out for our next webinar!), then you heard us discuss how non-compete agreements are one of the original areas in which state laws differed wildly, even before the recent trend in diverging state laws emerged. I could likely write a blog solely on non-compete agreements and stay busy for the next year.

Many clients come to me and tell me they wish to have a single form of a non-compete agreement that works nationwide. While a nationwide agreement is possible, it can be complicated because of the wide range of attitudes that states take toward such restrictive covenants. Today, I’ll focus on the extreme ends of the spectrum and talk about states that have virtually banned non-competes versus one state that has recently embraced them.

On the end of the spectrum most hostile to non-compete agreements are California, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, which have virtually banned non-competes. In California, employee non-competes, no matter how narrowly tailored, are not only unenforceable, but are also unlawful. Employers that entered into non-compete agreements with California employees before the 2024 law went into effect are even required to notify those employees that the agreement is void, so older agreements are not grandfathered in like in some other states. Employers that enter into a non-compete agreement with California employees are committing a civil violation and those employees have a private right to sue. Only limited exceptions to the general rule, such as a non-compete agreement for a former owner in a sale-of-business context, allow any sort of non-compete in California.

On the other end of the country and the non-compete spectrum lies Florida. The CHOICE Act, which was enacted on July 1, 2025, allows employers to use non-competes and garden leave provisions for employees that last up to four years, longer than any other state in the country would likely allow. The Act applies as long as the employee or independent contractor earns at least twice the mean wage of the county where the business is located (or where the employee lives if the employer is located out of state) and the employer provides the employee with written notice of their right to seek legal counsel and seven days to review the agreement before signing.

Between these extremes lie a wide range of differences from state to state, differences I’ll walk through in later installments. Stay tuned.