It depends on your state, and that is not a hedge — it is the whole architecture.
Non-competes are creatures of state law, four states treat virtually all employee non-competes as void, and among the states that permit them the test is whether the restriction is reasonable in duration, geography and purpose.
A clause that would be routine in one state is unenforceable a border away.
Four states void them outright
Start with the cleanest fact available: California, Minnesota, North Dakota and Oklahoma treat virtually all employee non-competes as void.
If you are practising in one of those, the clause in your contract is very likely unenforceable regardless of how it is drafted.
They arrived there differently, and the differences matter practically:
- North Dakota has banned them since 1865, under its Century Code. The clause is void — but the protection is essentially defensive: a worker challenging an attempted enforcement is largely on their own.
- California went further in 2024. Amendments added affirmative employer obligations, including proactive written notice to current and former employees that their non-competes are void, plus statutory damages and attorney's fees for workers who prevail.
- Minnesota voided non-competes in employment agreements entered into from 1 July 2023, covering independent contractors as well as employees.
- Oklahoma prohibits them by statute while expressly permitting non-solicitation of established customers — which is a distinction worth understanding on its own (see below).
The practical asymmetry: a void clause plus an enforcement mechanism (California) is a very different position from a void clause you must defend yourself against (North Dakota).
General information, not legal advice — and this area moves fast
Where they're permitted: the reasonableness test
In the states that allow non-competes, enforceability is not a yes/no property of the clause — it is a judgement a court makes about whether the restriction is reasonable.
The recurring elements are: a legitimate business interest the restriction actually protects, a duration no longer than needed to protect it, a geographic scope tied to where the practice genuinely operates, and no undue hardship imposed on the veterinarian.
Two consequences follow.
First, an overbroad clause is not automatically safe for the employer — overreach on radius or duration is exactly what gets a restriction narrowed or struck.
Second, "is my non-compete enforceable?" often has no clean answer until someone tries to enforce it, which is why the negotiating moment matters more than the litigating one.
Duration and radius in practice
Published contract-review commentary puts typical veterinary restrictions in a fairly narrow band.
Durations commonly run six to twenty-four months; a two-year restriction is often described as standard and one year as common, with terms beyond roughly twelve to twenty-four months attracting more scrutiny.
Geography should be tied to the practice's actual service area rather than a round number someone liked.
A radius that sweeps in metropolitan areas the practice draws no clients from is the kind of overreach the reasonableness test is designed to catch.
The detail people miss is what the radius is measured from.
A clause anchored to "any location owned or operated by the employer" behaves very differently from one anchored to the specific hospital you worked at — particularly with a corporate group that owns many sites.
In a consolidated market that single drafting choice can be the difference between a modest restriction and being unable to work in your metro at all.
Washington's income threshold — a different model
Not every restricting state uses the reasonableness test alone.
Washington layers on an income floor: non-compete clauses are void unless the employee's annualized earnings exceed a statutory threshold that is adjusted for inflation each year — $126,858.83 for 2026 — and for those employees a restriction longer than eighteen months is presumed unreasonable.
That model is worth knowing because it changes who is covered rather than how the clause is written.
It sweeps most support staff out of scope entirely while leaving veterinarians inside it — a distinction that matters if you are a practice owner drafting agreements across a whole team.
⚠ The threshold is re-set every year, so confirm the current figure before relying on it.
And the whole model has an end date: Washington amended the statute in 2026 so that from June 30, 2027 all non-competes are void regardless of when they were signed — details on the Washington page.
The veterinary-specific argument: access to care
Most non-compete analysis is generic employment law.
There is one argument that is genuinely veterinary, and it is worth knowing on both sides of the table.
Where enforcing a restriction would disrupt access to urgent or specialised veterinary care, a court may find that enforcement conflicts with the public interest.
The scenario most often described is a small or rural community with few veterinarians, where removing one practitioner from the market leaves animals without reasonable access to care.
This maps onto a real structural feature of the profession: emergency and specialty capacity is thin in much of the country, and a restriction that would be unremarkable in a dense metro can have a very different practical effect in a county with one after-hours provider.
It is not a general escape hatch — it is one factor a court may weigh, and it depends heavily on facts.
But it is the argument most specific to this vertical, and it is frequently absent from generic non-compete commentary.
Non-compete is not the same as non-solicitation
These get conflated constantly, and they are separate clauses with separate legal treatment.
A non-compete restricts you from practising within a defined area for a defined period.
A non-solicitation restricts you from approaching the practice's clients — or its staff — after you leave, without necessarily restricting where you may work.
Oklahoma is the clean illustration: it prohibits non-competes while expressly permitting agreements barring direct solicitation of a former employer's established customers.
So "non-competes are banned here" does not mean you leave unrestricted.
Client non-solicitation has a particular edge in veterinary medicine, where bonds are formed with individual practitioners and clients often follow a veterinarian rather than a building.
A tightly drafted client non-solicitation can constrain a move more than a loose non-compete would.
Check for a staff non-solicitation clause too — restrictions on recruiting former colleagues are common and easy to overlook.
Before you sign
The negotiating moment is the one that counts.
Once signed, your options narrow to complying or contesting, and contesting is expensive even when you are right.
- Does your state permit non-competes at all — or is it one of the four that void them?
- What exactly is the restricted activity: all veterinary practice, or a defined specialty or species?
- How long does it run, and from what date — separation, or something else?
- What is the radius, and is it measured from your hospital or from every site the employer owns?
- Is there a separate client non-solicitation clause, and how is "client" defined?
- Is there a staff non-solicitation clause?
- Does the restriction survive if the employer terminates you without cause?
- Is there a buy-out — a sum that releases you from the restriction?
- Has an attorney who does veterinary contracts in your state read it?
That last item is not a formality.
Non-compete enforceability turns on state-specific doctrine and recent decisions, which is precisely the kind of thing a general employment template will not capture — and precisely why this page explains how the rules work rather than telling you what your clause does.
State pages
We publish a state page only once it has been researched and dated, so this list grows in batches rather than covering all fifty at once:
- California — void, with employer notice duties and worker remedies
- Minnesota — void for agreements entered from 1 July 2023
- North Dakota — void since 1865, but with no remedy attached
- Oklahoma — prohibited, while customer non-solicitation is permitted
- Washington — permitted above an inflation-indexed income threshold and capped at 18 months, until all non-competes become void on 30 June 2027
If your state is not listed, read that as "not yet verified" rather than as any indication of what its law says.
Comparing offers?
Browse open veterinarian positions and treat the restrictive covenants as part of the compensation package, alongside the production formula — they are both things you negotiate once and live with for years.