The FTC just made clear that while the nationwide noncompete ban is dead, the agency is not backing down. Employers, particularly in healthcare, are officially on notice. TL;DR: The FTC, led by Chairman Andrew Ferguson, is shifting to case-by-case enforcement. The agency has begun sending warning letters to healthcare…
It promised freedom, delivered litigation, and left us with… state law. Friends, colleagues, HR professionals, lend me your ears. We gather today to mourn the passing of the Noncompete Rule, a sweeping reform that promised to free 30 million American workers from contractual shackles but instead met its end in…
The Federal Trade Commission isn’t finished with noncompetes. It is gathering information to understand when these agreements cause real harm and when they may serve legitimate business purposes. Case in point: its latest enforcement action against an employer that allegedly relied on broad, boilerplate restrictions. TL;DR: The FTC has launched…
Most people didn’t connect the dots between last week’s Supreme Court decision in Trump v. CASA and the FTC’s ban on noncompetes. But maybe they should. The Court’s ruling didn’t mention employment law. It didn’t say a word about the FTC. But it did take a wrecking ball to the…
Noncompetes are under pressure. Federal regulators have wanted to ban them. States like California, Minnesota, and Oklahoma already have. And even where they remain technically legal, courts are increasingly skeptical—especially when the restrictions go further than necessary. Because a large part of my practice involves reviewing employment and equity agreements…
As Tom Petty once sang, “The waiting is the hardest part.” Employers waiting on the uncertain fate of the Federal Trade Commission’s non-compete rule can relate. With the initial sweeping ban announced in 2024 and legal challenges that followed, many businesses have been left wondering how to structure their workforce…
Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it had ordered a building services contractor to stop enforcing a no-hire agreement. The agreement purportedly prohibited building owners and managers from hiring the contractor’s employees. Some of you are probably thinking that you read somewhere—possibly here—that a federal court enjoined the FTC’s sweeping…
On Friday afternoon, the Federal Trade Commission notified a federal judge in Texas who had previously entered a nationwide injunction against its sweeping noncompete ban that the agency would appeal her decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The judge had previously ruled that Congress did not afford the FTC statutory authority to create…
Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission filed a notice of appeal with the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, signifying that it will ask the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a trial judge’s August 15 decision to enjoin enforcement of its sweeping noncompete ban. Should…
The Federal Trade Commission, the architects of the sweeping noncompete ban that a federal judge in Texas set aside last month, told a federal judge in Pennsylvania yesterday that an appeal of the Texas decision “would likely take months to fully brief and could take a year or longer until…