Veterinary Non-Competes in Florida

Florida runs two statutes side by side, and which one reaches a veterinarian's covenant depends on income rather than on being a veterinarian.

The CHOICE Act reaches a "covered employee" — someone who earns or is expected to earn a salary greater than twice the county's (or relevant area's) annual mean wage — and lets an employer bind that employee to garden-leave and non-compete terms that carry a presumption of enforceability and a mandatory preliminary injunction if a breach is alleged.

Anyone the CHOICE Act's "covered employee" definition does not reach falls instead to Florida Statutes section 542.335, the reasonableness and legitimate-business-interest test that has governed Florida non-competes since 1996.

For an associate veterinarian reading an offer, the first question the covenant raises is which of the two statutes applies — and that is an income question, not a licensing question.

The CHOICE Act's "covered employee" definition explicitly excludes "a person classified as a health care practitioner as defined in s. 456.001." Section 456.001(4) defines that term as an exhaustive list of licenses under Chapters 457 through 491 — dentistry, medicine, nursing, and the other human-medicine chapters on that list.

Veterinary medicine is licensed under Chapter 474, which the definition does not name.

That means a veterinarian is not excluded from "covered employee" status the way a physician, dentist or nurse is: a veterinarian who clears the income threshold can be bound by the CHOICE Act's garden-leave regime, while a Florida physician earning the same income is excluded from it and falls back to the neutral § 542.335 standard instead.

The CHOICE Act's threshold is not a flat dollar figure: it is a salary greater than twice the relevant county's annual mean wage, so the qualifying number moves with local wage data.

Above that line, the statute permits garden-leave terms running up to 4 years, during which the employer must keep paying the employee's salary and benefits, with no work required of the employee after the first 90 days.

Florida Statutes section 542.335, by contrast, carries no wage threshold and no statutory duration cap for anyone the CHOICE Act does not cover — it asks only whether the restriction is reasonable and protects a legitimate business interest.

The CHOICE Act took effect July 1, 2025, created by 2025 SB 922, and it is what puts a high-earning veterinarian's covenant into a different, more employer-favorable framework than the one that governed before it existed.

Florida Statutes section 542.335, the older reasonableness statute, is recorded as last substantively amended in 1996 and continues to apply to anyone the CHOICE Act's "covered employee" definition does not reach.

The research behind this page reads the CHOICE Act and § 456.001(4)'s definitions directly; it does not cover how a Florida court modifies or blue-pencils a covenant it finds overbroad, whether a covenant tied to selling a practice or an ownership interest is treated differently, or how client and staff non-solicitation clauses are handled under either statute.

Those gaps matter most at a buy-in or buy-out, where a covenant may be drafted alongside the purchase terms.

They are left blank here rather than filled from another state's rule — take them to a Florida attorney with the whole agreement in hand.