The first half of 2026 has been the most active year for noncompete legislation in a generation. Washington enacted a total ban on noncompetes regardless of income. Tennessee voided noncompetes for employees earning less than $70,000. Virginia added a termination-for-cause condition on enforceability, and joined Utah, Maine, New Hampshire, and Iowa in restricting or banning noncompetes for healthcare professionals. As Chuck Knapp and Erik Mosvick recently summarized in Law360, "state legislatures continue to drive the most consequential changes to noncompete law across the nation," and the direction of travel in most jurisdictions is toward restriction, income-based thresholds, and sector-specific bans.
Florida is not in that group. In fact, Florida has moved decisively in the opposite direction. This article summarizes the national trend, then explains how Florida's 2025 CHOICE Act, together with the longstanding § 542.335 framework and the 2019 specialist-physician carveout at § 542.336, positions Florida as one of the most aggressively employer-friendly noncompete jurisdictions in the country. It closes with what that divergence means for Florida employers and Florida employees.
The National Direction of Travel
The clearest signal from the first half of 2026 is that noncompete reform is happening state by state, not at the federal level. Five headline developments captured the direction:
- Washington (H.B. 1155): effective June 30, 2027, bans all noncompetition covenants for workers regardless of income, applies retroactively to existing agreements, and imposes a $5,000 statutory penalty per violation. The statute's broad definition of "noncompetition covenant" sweeps in forfeiture-for-competition provisions and clauses that indirectly prohibit accepting business from a customer.
- Tennessee (H.B. 1034): effective July 1, 2026, voids noncompetes for employees whose annualized compensation is less than $70,000, and creates a rebuttable statutory presumption that restrictive covenants of two years or less in duration are reasonable in scope (five years in the sale-of-business context).
- Virginia (S.B. 170): effective July 1, 2026, bars enforcement of noncompetes against any employee discharged without cause unless the employer provides severance or other monetary payment.
- Louisiana (H.B. 315): effective August 1, 2026, prohibits noncompetes with interns and apprentices.
- Healthcare-specific bans: Utah, Maine, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Virginia each enacted new prohibitions on noncompete agreements for healthcare practitioners in the first half of 2026, adding to a growing list of states that treat healthcare-sector mobility as a distinct public-interest concern.
Taken together, these developments produce a fragmented compliance landscape for multistate employers, with income thresholds, profession-specific carveouts, and retroactivity provisions varying by jurisdiction. The Law360 authors call it a landscape in which "a one-size-fits-all approach is increasingly untenable."
Florida's Framework Before 2025
Even before the CHOICE Act, Florida was already one of the most employer-friendly noncompete jurisdictions in the country. The core statute, § 542.335, Florida Statutes, has for years authorized enforcement of restrictive covenants that are supported by a "legitimate business interest" and reasonable in time, area, and line of business. The statute expressly directs courts to construe restrictive covenants in favor of protecting the employer's legitimate business interests, and to modify overbroad covenants rather than void them (the statutory "blue pencil"). Florida courts have long declined to apply a public-interest balancing test to whether a particular restraint should be enforced.
The one meaningful carveout Florida had adopted before 2025 was § 542.336, enacted in 2019, which invalidates noncompetes for physicians who practice in specialties served by only one entity within a county. That statute recognized that concentrated markets for medical specialists produced access-to-care problems that a rigid application of § 542.335 could not remedy. Even that carveout, however, is narrower than the healthcare-professional bans other states have now enacted, which typically cover a broad range of nurses, therapists, and allied health professionals regardless of local market concentration.
The 2025 CHOICE Act
In 2025, the Florida Legislature enacted the Contracts Honoring Opportunity, Investment, Confidentiality, and Economic Growth Act, commonly called the CHOICE Act, codified at §§ 542.41 through 542.46, Florida Statutes, and effective July 1, 2025. Rather than restricting noncompete enforceability, the CHOICE Act created a parallel statutory framework that is significantly more employer-friendly than § 542.335, and applies to a specific class of high-earning workers.
The essential features of the CHOICE Act framework are:
- Coverage. The Act applies to "Covered Employees," defined generally as employees or independent contractors whose annualized salary exceeds twice the annual mean wage of the Florida county in which the employer maintains its principal place of business (or, if the employer's principal place of business is outside Florida, of the county where the employee resides). The threshold is meaningful and adjusts with local wage data; in most Florida counties, it runs above six figures.
- Duration. The Act authorizes both Covered Garden Leave Agreements and Covered Noncompete Agreements of up to four years in duration. That is a striking figure, several times longer than the typical one-to-two-year covenant the market and § 542.335 case law have historically supported.
- Presumption of enforceability. The statute creates a strong presumption that agreements complying with its requirements are enforceable, and directs courts toward preliminary injunctive relief on a showing of noncompliance by the employee.
- Notice and acknowledgment. The Act imposes procedural safeguards. The employer must provide the employee with at least seven days' advance written notice before execution and must advise the employee, in writing, of the right to consult counsel. The employee must acknowledge in writing that these requirements were met.
- Garden leave option. Under a Covered Garden Leave Agreement, the employer continues to pay the employee's base salary and non-discretionary compensation during the restricted period, in exchange for a defined obligation not to compete. The Act permits the employer to reduce garden leave compensation to base and non-discretionary components, excluding discretionary bonuses.
- Interaction with § 542.335. The CHOICE Act does not replace § 542.335 for employees who are not Covered Employees. Below the compensation threshold, the traditional Florida framework continues to govern. The CHOICE Act operates as a parallel, more aggressive regime for the high-earning tier.
The direction is unmistakable. While much of the country is narrowing what a covenant not to compete can do to a worker, Florida has explicitly expanded what it can do to a certain kind of worker. Where Washington's H.B. 1155 casts a total ban, the CHOICE Act casts a very long shadow.
What This Means for Florida Employers
Florida employers, especially those competing for senior talent against out-of-state employers, now have an unusually strong statutory tool for protecting investments in workforce. Practically, the following points matter most:
- The CHOICE Act is optional, and it is procedural. Employers do not automatically get four-year noncompetes. To secure the CHOICE Act's benefits, the agreement must comply with the Act's definitions, notice, and acknowledgment requirements. Boilerplate that would have supported enforcement under § 542.335 will not necessarily qualify under the CHOICE Act.
- Screening for "Covered Employee" status matters. The wage threshold is county-specific and can change year over year. Employers who intend to rely on the CHOICE Act should confirm each covered agreement is tied to the correct threshold at the time of execution and should document that determination.
- Multistate exposure remains real. A Florida employer with employees in Washington, Tennessee, Virginia, Utah, Maine, or a growing list of other states cannot rely on a CHOICE Act agreement to bind those employees to Florida law. Some of those states' statutes prohibit contractual choice-of-law provisions that would circumvent local restrictions, and their courts have increasingly refused to honor Florida choice-of-law clauses when doing so would evade a protective home-state statute.
- Healthcare remains different. Florida's § 542.336 continues to invalidate noncompetes against specialty physicians in single-entity-per-county specialties. In addition, any Florida employer with healthcare workers licensed in states like Utah, Maine, or New Hampshire must comply with those states' bans regardless of a Florida choice-of-law clause.
- Audit template agreements now. The CHOICE Act's requirements are not intuitively met by pre-2025 restrictive-covenant templates. Employers whose noncompete templates predate July 1, 2025, and who want the CHOICE Act's benefits for their high-earning workforce, should have their templates reviewed and updated.
What This Means for Florida Employees
For Florida employees, particularly high-earning executives and specialists, the CHOICE Act meaningfully changes the calculus of accepting a new position or leaving an existing one.
- Read the noncompete before signing. The Act's seven-day notice provision and written right-to-counsel advisement mean that any post-2025 Florida employment agreement covering a high-earner should include those disclosures. Their presence signals that the employer is invoking the CHOICE Act. Their absence may create arguments about whether the CHOICE Act's protections apply at all.
- Understand the difference between garden leave and post-employment noncompete. A Covered Garden Leave Agreement continues to pay the employee during the restricted period. A Covered Noncompete Agreement typically does not. That is a material difference in economic exposure.
- Consider the duration. A four-year noncompete is a career-shaping obligation. Employees should evaluate the covenant not as boilerplate but as part of the compensation package, and should negotiate scope, geography, and duration where possible.
- Do not assume out-of-state relocation cures the problem. Florida law follows a Florida-signed agreement in many cases, and Florida courts hearing a Florida-choice-of-law CHOICE Act dispute will apply Florida law even if the employee has since moved elsewhere, subject to the destination state's own protective policies.
- Get advice before resigning. For any Florida executive whose current agreement is or may be a CHOICE Act covered agreement, the smart move is to consult counsel before providing notice of resignation. Timing, the form of the notice, and the interaction between the employment agreement and the CHOICE Act's presumptions can materially change the enforcement risk.
The Bigger Picture
The Law360 authors describe the national trend as one in which "state legislatures are driving the most consequential changes in noncompete law," and observe that a one-size-fits-all approach to restrictive covenants is no longer sustainable. Florida is proof of that proposition in reverse. As Washington moves to abolish noncompetes and states from Utah to Iowa to New Hampshire narrow them for healthcare workers, Florida has adopted a framework designed to make certain noncompetes more, not less, enforceable.
For Florida employers, that means the tools available for protecting workforce investments are stronger than at almost any point in the last three decades, provided the employer follows the CHOICE Act's procedural rules. For Florida employees, it means a Florida noncompete deserves more attention on the front end than employees have historically given it. And for any business or executive operating across state lines, it means a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction analysis is not optional. It is now the baseline.
Black Law P.A. represents both employers and employees in Florida noncompete matters, including CHOICE Act agreements, § 542.335 disputes, § 542.336 specialty-physician matters, and the increasingly complex multistate scenarios that arise when Florida agreements meet other states' protective statutes.