Veterinary Associate Non-Competes and Non-Solicits in 2026: What Owners Need to Know

• The federal ban is gone, and that is the trap. A lot of owners think non-competes are now illegal. The FTC rule was vacated nationwide in August 2024, never took effect, and the FTC dropped its appeal in September 2025. Non-competes are back under state law, full stop.
• Your state decides everything. Four states (California, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma) void most non-competes. Many others allow them only above a salary threshold. Everywhere else, a non-compete holds up only if it’s reasonable in geography, time, and scope.
• The 2025 healthcare carve-outs probably don’t cover your vets. Per Littler, veterinarians are not explicitly mentioned in any state’s health-practitioner non-compete law. So those physician-and-dentist rules usually don’t reach associate DVMs, who fall back on common-law reasonableness.
• The non-solicit is often the stronger tool. A client non-solicit and an NDA protect the thing you actually care about (your client relationships and confidential information), survive even Minnesota’s ban, and don’t stop the vet from earning a living, so courts uphold them more readily.
• This is exactly the kind of moving-target question a peer of your size has already worked through. OwnerExchange is the community built only for owners of 3+ DVM practices doing $3 to $10M and up, where someone in the room has already rewritten their associate contracts for 2026 and will tell you what their state counsel said.

A multi-doctor owner I know spent a weekend last year quietly relieved.

The FTC had just voted to ban non-competes, the headlines were everywhere, and she figured the messy clause in her associate contracts was now somebody else’s problem. She was wrong, and she didn’t find out until a key associate gave notice and announced she was opening two miles away. The clause the owner thought was dead was, in her state, very much alive, and nobody had looked at it in three years.

That’s the whole problem with this topic right now. The law moved twice, the news only covered the first move, and a lot of good owners are operating on a headline that’s eighteen months out of date. The federal ban never took effect. Non-competes are governed by state law again, and the rules vary wildly from one state line to the next.

I’m going to walk through what actually happened with the FTC rule, the four kinds of restrictive covenants and which ones hold up, and what a reasonable associate clause looks like in 2026. None of this is legal advice, and the rules genuinely differ by state, so treat it as the map and bring in qualified employment counsel in your state for the terrain.

What happened to the FTC non-compete ban?

Short version: it’s gone, and it never took effect. In April 2024 the Federal Trade Commission voted to issue a rule (16 CFR 910) that would have banned most non-competes nationwide (FTC). The veterinary world braced for it.

Then a federal court stopped it. On August 20, 2024, in Ryan, LLC v. FTC, Judge Ada Brown of the Northern District of Texas set the rule aside nationwide, holding the FTC lacked the authority to issue it and that the rule was arbitrary and capricious (Holland & Knight). The rule never went into effect for anyone.

The FTC appealed at first. But under new leadership, the Commission voted 3 to 1 on September 5, 2025 to accede to the vacatur, the Fifth Circuit dismissed the appeal on September 8, 2025, and the rule was removed from the Code of Federal Regulations (FTC; AVMA). The ban is over.

One important caveat, so you don’t over-correct. “The rule is gone” is true, but non-competes are not entirely risk-free at the federal level. The FTC has signaled it will pursue individual non-competes case by case under Section 5 (it launched a Joint Labor Task Force in February 2025 and took action against Gateway Services in September 2025). The blanket ban is dead; case-by-case federal scrutiny is not.

So who governs veterinary non-competes now?

State law. Entirely. With the federal rule vacated, whether your associate’s non-compete is worth the paper it’s printed on comes down to the state where the practice sits.

And the states fall into three very different camps. A clause that’s airtight in one is automatically void in another, which is why a national template you found online is dangerous.

A handful of states ban most employee non-competes outright. California has barred them for over a century (Business and Professions Code 16600), and its 2024 update (16600.5) even required employers to notify current and former employees of unenforceable clauses by February 14, 2024. Minnesota voided non-competes entered on or after July 1, 2023 (181.988), North Dakota (9-08-06) and Oklahoma (15-219A) bar them by statute, and Montana and Wyoming bar them broadly.

A second group allows non-competes only above a salary threshold, often indexed to inflation each year. Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Illinois, Virginia, Maryland, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Nevada, and the District of Columbia all gate enforceability to a minimum wage level (Littler). Below the floor, the clause is void; above it, the reasonableness rules still apply.

Everywhere else, the default rule is common-law reasonableness, which I’ll come back to. First, the moving piece most owners miss.

Do the new 2025 healthcare laws cover veterinarians?

This is the question I get most, and the answer surprises people. In 2025 a wave of states tightened non-competes specifically for health care practitioners. Pennsylvania’s law took effect January 1, 2025, capping covenants at one year and making them unenforceable if the practitioner is involuntarily dismissed (Foley & Lardner). Texas followed on September 1, 2025, capping health-practitioner non-competes at one year, a 5-mile radius, and a buyout no greater than the practitioner’s annual salary. Indiana, Colorado, Oregon, and others added their own limits.

Here’s the catch. These laws define “health care practitioner” around physicians, dentists, nurses, and physician assistants. As the law firm Littler put it plainly, veterinarians are not explicitly mentioned in any state’s provisions.

So most of these healthcare carve-outs do not automatically reach your associate DVMs. Unless your state bans non-competes outright, your veterinarians usually fall back under the general common-law reasonableness regime, not the friendlier physician rules. It’s a meaningful gap, and it’s exactly the kind of detail a national contract template will get wrong.

That said, this area is in flux. States are adding practitioner categories session by session, so the fact that vets aren’t named today doesn’t mean they won’t be tomorrow. Confirm the current definition in your state before you rely on it either way.

The 4 restrictive covenants, and which ones actually hold up

“Non-compete” gets used as a catch-all, but there are really four different tools in an associate contract, and they are not equally enforceable. Knowing the difference is most of the battle, because the disfavored tool (the non-compete) is often the one owners over-rely on, while the durable tools sit unused.

Here is how they compare.

Restrictive covenant	What it restricts	Enforceability notes
Non-compete	Bars the departing associate from working at, or opening, a competing practice within a defined area and time.	The most disfavored. Void by statute in CA, MN, ND, OK (and broadly in MT, WY); allowed only above a salary floor in WA, OR, CO, IL, VA, MD, RI, NH, ME, NV, DC; elsewhere enforceable only if reasonable in geography, duration, and scope.
Client non-solicit	Bars the associate from soliciting or taking the practice’s clients (and their pets) after leaving.	Less disfavored, more enforceable. Survives even Minnesota’s non-compete ban. Protects the real interest (client relationships) without stopping the vet from working.
Employee non-solicit	Bars the associate from recruiting or poaching the practice’s other staff to a new employer.	Generally enforceable when reasonable. A practical defense against a departing associate taking a technician team with them.
NDA / confidentiality	Protects confidential information, client lists, pricing, and trade secrets from disclosure or use.	The least disfavored. Survives Minnesota’s ban, backstopped by the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act and state Uniform Trade Secrets Act. Rarely the clause a court strikes.

A quick note on the state tiers, because they govern that whole table. Ban states (CA, MN, ND, OK, plus MT/WY) void the non-compete column but generally still permit the non-solicit and NDA columns. Threshold states (WA, OR, CO, IL, VA and the others above) allow non-competes only above a salary floor. Common-law states (most of the rest) judge each clause on reasonableness. Find your tier first; everything else follows from it.

The strategic point is the one most owners miss. A client non-solicit plus a solid NDA often protects what you actually care about, your client relationships and your confidential information, more durably than a non-compete, because courts will enforce them more readily and they don’t bar the veterinarian from earning a living (Mandelbaum Barrett). The non-compete is the blunt instrument. The non-solicit is the scalpel.

The strongest protection is usually the one that lets your associate keep working. Owners who sleep well aren’t relying on a shaky non-compete; they’ve built client non-solicits and NDAs their state counsel actually signed off on. See the room where owners compare what their counsel approved →

What does a “reasonable” associate non-compete look like?

In the states where non-competes are allowed, a court won’t enforce one just because the associate signed it. The clause has to be reasonable, and reasonableness has three dimensions plus a threshold question.

The threshold question is whether you have a legitimate business interest worth protecting, like client relationships, goodwill, or confidential information. The three dimensions are scope of activity, geography, and duration. Overshoot on any one and you risk the whole clause.

How aggressively a court fixes an overbroad clause depends on your state. Blue-pencil states will narrow an unreasonable term down to something enforceable. Red-pencil states throw the entire covenant out if any part is overbroad, which means a greedy clause can leave you with no protection at all.

The AVMA takes a light-touch, practical view here. Its jobseeker guidance cites a rule of thumb that the radius should cover roughly the area a practice draws about 80 percent of its patients and revenue from, that one to three years is standard, and that courts generally don’t tolerate beyond about two years for an employee (AVMA). It also notes non-competes typically aren’t used for interns and urges associates to understand and negotiate the terms.

Translating that into typical associate terms (and these vary by market and source, so hold them loosely): a radius of roughly 3 to 15 miles in a metro area, up to 15 to 25 miles in a rural one; a duration of one to two years, where one year is reasonable almost anywhere, two years is upheld in some markets, and three years is rarely found reasonable for an employee. Scope should name the narrow practice type, small-animal general practice, for instance, not “the practice of veterinary medicine” generally. The narrower and more specific, the more likely it survives.

Why broad non-competes can cost you the associate you wanted to keep

Here’s the part that’s easy to miss when you’re focused on protecting the practice. An aggressive non-compete doesn’t just risk being unenforceable. It can actively work against you.

A heavy-handed restriction limits a good associate’s mobility and bargaining power, and associates know it. The best young veterinarians have options, and a contract that reads as a cage is a reason to choose a different employer, or to leave the moment they can. The FTC estimated that roughly 18 percent of US workers, nearly 1 in 5, are bound by a non-compete, and up to about 45 percent of physicians (FTC), so candidates are increasingly comparing the fine print.

The more durable form of retention isn’t a legal leash anyway. It’s culture, fair compensation, and a clear path forward, backed by a narrow client non-solicit that protects your relationships without holding the person hostage. You keep people by making the seat worth staying in, not by making the exit expensive.

That reframe matters because the owners who get this right stop treating the contract as the retention strategy. The contract protects the practice at the edges. The everyday experience of working for you is what actually keeps the team.

Why this is harder for a multi-doctor practice

A solo owner with one associate has one contract to get right. A practice with six or eight or ten doctors has a stack of them, often signed in different years, under different versions of the law, sometimes copied from a template that was never right for the state.

That’s the quiet exposure in a growing practice. Every associate you’ve hired since 2023 may be sitting under a clause that’s now stale, because the FTC saga, the Minnesota ban, and the 2025 healthcare laws all landed inside that window. The contract that was fine when you signed it may not be fine now, and you won’t know until someone tests it.

And the stakes scale with you. When a single associate leaves a one-doctor practice, the client overlap is contained. When a doctor leaves a multi-location practice and sets up nearby, the clients, the staff, and the referral relationships at risk are far larger, which is exactly when you’ll wish the non-solicit and NDA had been tightened years earlier.

The fix isn’t complicated, but it isn’t free either. It’s a periodic review of every associate agreement against current law in your state, with counsel, before a departure forces the question. The practices that get burned are the ones that signed once and never looked again.

Where a room of peers actually helps

You can read every law-firm alert on the FTC saga and still not know the practical things: how a peer in your state actually rewrote their associate contract for 2026, what their employment counsel charged, or whether a client non-solicit alone has held up in your jurisdiction. That knowledge doesn’t live in a statute. It lives in other owners who’ve already been through it.

That’s the gap OwnerExchange was built to close. It’s not a law firm and it’s not a vendor pitch. It’s a private community built only for owners of 3+ DVM practices doing $3 to $10 million and up, the sharpest 5 percent of independent owners, in a room where someone has already faced the exact departing-associate situation you’re bracing for.

What that looks like in practice:

• Caliber-matched mastermind PODS. A small, curated group of owners at your scale, so the person across the table is managing a roster of associate contracts too, not a single hire.
• A private 24/7 forum. When a non-compete question lands on a Tuesday, you post it, and owners who’ve handled the same thing in your state answer, alongside a searchable archive of what the group has already worked through.
• The conversations that don’t fit anywhere else. Contracts, compensation, retention, the legal landmines nobody warns you about, and protecting what you built without becoming the employer good vets avoid.
• No fluff, no vendors, no noise. Members describe it as a private boardroom of sharp owners trading what actually worked, not generic advice.

You’ll still need qualified employment counsel in your state, and nothing in a peer room replaces a real lawyer. But the difference between guessing alone and asking a dozen owners who’ve already solved it is the difference between a gamble and a plan.

We’re selective on purpose. The room only works when every owner in it is operating at a level where these problems are real, and the answers are hard-won.

Further reading

If associate contracts are on your mind, these go deeper on the people decisions that sit right next to them.

• Veterinary human resources best practices — the hiring, classification, and policy decisions that make contracts and culture work together.
• The challenges of veterinary practice ownership — the legal, financial, and people pressures that come with the seat, and how owners carry them.
• The veterinary practice owner community — who’s in the OwnerExchange room and how owners use each other to de-risk decisions like these.

Frequently asked questions

Are veterinary non-compete agreements enforceable in 2026?

It depends entirely on your state. The federal FTC rule that would have banned most non-competes was vacated nationwide by a Texas court in August 2024 and never took effect, and in September 2025 the FTC dropped its appeal, so non-competes are again governed by state law. A few states (California, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma) void them outright. Many others allow them only above a salary threshold. In most states a veterinary non-compete is enforceable only if it’s reasonable in geography, duration, and scope. This is general education, not legal advice; confirm with employment counsel in your state.

Did the FTC ban on non-competes take effect?

No. The FTC voted in April 2024 to ban most non-competes, but a federal court in Texas (Ryan v. FTC) set the rule aside nationwide on August 20, 2024, holding the FTC lacked authority to issue it. The rule never went into effect. The FTC initially appealed, then voted 3-1 on September 5, 2025 to accede to the vacatur, and the appeals were dismissed. Non-competes aren’t risk-free federally (the FTC has signaled case-by-case enforcement under Section 5), but the blanket ban is gone and state law controls.

Which states ban veterinary non-competes?

Four states make most employee non-competes void by statute: California (Bus. & Prof. Code 16600), Minnesota (181.988, for agreements on or after July 1, 2023), North Dakota (9-08-06), and Oklahoma (15-219A). Montana and Wyoming bar them broadly. Minnesota’s ban expressly does not reach NDAs or non-solicits, so those remain available even there. A separate group (Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Illinois, Virginia, and others) allows non-competes only above a salary threshold.

Do the 2025 healthcare non-compete laws cover veterinarians?

Usually not. Several states passed 2025 limits on non-competes for health care practitioners (for example Pennsylvania, effective Jan. 1, 2025, and Texas, effective Sept. 1, 2025), but these laws define a “health care practitioner” around physicians, dentists, nurses, and PAs. Per Littler, veterinarians are not explicitly mentioned in any state’s provisions. So most of these carve-outs don’t automatically reach associate DVMs, who generally fall back under their state’s common-law reasonableness rules unless the state bans non-competes outright.

What is a reasonable non-compete for a veterinary associate?

Where allowed, courts ask whether the restriction is reasonable in geography, duration, and scope and tied to a legitimate business interest. AVMA guidance describes a rule of thumb: a radius covering roughly the area the practice draws about 80 percent of its patients from, with one to three years considered standard. Typical associate terms run a radius of about 3 to 15 miles in metro areas (up to 15 to 25 miles rural) and one to two years; one year is reasonable almost anywhere, two is upheld in some markets, and three is rarely reasonable for an employee. Scope should be the narrow practice type, not veterinary medicine generally. Terms vary by state and market.

What is the difference between a non-compete, a non-solicit, and an NDA?

A non-compete bars a departing associate from working at a competing practice within a defined area and time. A client non-solicit bars them from soliciting the practice’s clients; an employee non-solicit bars them from recruiting coworkers. An NDA protects confidential information and trade secrets. Non-solicits and NDAs are less disfavored and more widely enforceable; they survive even Minnesota’s non-compete ban and often protect the real interest (client relationships, confidential information) without preventing the vet from earning a living.

Sources

The FTC non-compete rule and its vacatur

1. Federal Trade Commission. “FTC Announces Rule Banning Noncompetes” (April 2024) and the subsequent vote to accede to the vacatur (September 2025). ftc.gov
2. Holland & Knight. “Texas Federal Court Sets Aside FTC Noncompete Rule Nationwide” (Ryan, LLC v. FTC, Aug. 20, 2024). hklaw.com
3. American Veterinary Medical Association. “FTC vacates noncompete rule” (AVMA News). avma.org

State law: bans and salary thresholds

4. Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. “181.988 Covenants Not to Compete Void and Unenforceable” (effective July 1, 2023; carve-out for NDAs and non-solicits). revisor.mn.gov
5. California Legislative Information. “Business and Professions Code 16600” (and 16600.5 notice requirement). leginfo.legislature.ca.gov
6. Littler Mendelson. “States Continue to Limit Restrictive Covenants for Health Care Professionals” (salary-threshold states; veterinarians not explicitly named). littler.com

2025 healthcare-practitioner limits

7. Foley & Lardner LLP. “Pennsylvania’s Fair Contracting for Health Care Practitioners Act” (effective Jan. 1, 2025). foley.com

Veterinary-specific guidance

8. American Veterinary Medical Association. “Noncompete agreements: What veterinary professionals need to know.” avma.org
9. American Veterinary Medical Association. “Contracts and restrictive covenants” (jobseeker guidance; radius and duration rules of thumb). avma.org
10. Mandelbaum Barrett PC. “Veterinary Non-Competes: What Practice Owners and Associates Should Know.” mandelbaumbarrett.com
11. Chelle Law / ReviewVeterinaryContracts.com. “Veterinarian Non-Compete Agreements” (typical associate radius and term ranges). chellelaw.com