For the past several years, non-compete agreements have been under attack by legislatures, agencies and regulators throughout the country. In 2018, Massachusetts led a renewed charge by state legislatures to reign in the use of non-compete agreements in the workforce, passing a law that significantly limited the ability of employers to bind employees to non-compete restrictions in the state. In 2019, Washington state followed suit, enacting a similar law restricting the use of non-compete agreements for Washington employees (this year, Washington state further amended the earlier law, imposing added restrictions on the use of non-compete covenants).

Since then, many other states have passed legislation restricting the use of non-competes; some prohibiting the use of non-competes for low-wage workers based on specific compensation thresholds (often setting these thresholds higher than one might expect), imposing detailed notice requirements, restricting the use of choice of law clauses to evade state law or otherwise restricting the enforceability of non-compete agreements generally.