Veterinary Non-Competes in Tennessee

For an agreement entered into, renewed, or amended on or after July 1, 2026, the statute adds two gates on top of the common law: a compensation floor (§ 50-1-211) and rebuttable duration presumptions (§ 50-1-210).

Everything the statute does not address still runs through the Tennessee Supreme Court's reasonableness cases: whether the restraint protects a legitimate business interest such as confidential information or customer goodwill, the hardship it imposes on the employee, and the public interest.

An associate reading an offer is therefore reading two texts at once — the new statutory floor and presumptions, and the case-law reasonableness test underneath them.

Section 63-1-148, the healthcare-provider restriction, applies to providers licensed under Title 63 chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 11 — podiatry, chiropractic, dentistry, medicine and surgery, optometry, osteopathic medicine, and psychology.

Veterinary medicine is Title 63, chapter 12, and is not among them, so that statute's limits are not written for a veterinarian's covenant.

Murfreesboro Medical Clinic, P.A. v.

Udom held physicians' covenants not to compete unenforceable and void, and its reasoning rests on the physician–patient relationship; nothing in it extends the rule to veterinarians.

A headline about Tennessee restricting healthcare non-competes is about physicians, not veterinary contracts.

For an agreement entered into, renewed, or amended on or after July 1, 2026, an employer may not require, request, or enforce a noncompete against an employee whose annualized compensation is less than $70,000, and the statute voids an agreement executed in violation as a matter of public policy.

Annualized compensation means total compensation from the employer — wages, salary, commissions, nondiscretionary bonuses and other remuneration, calculated on an annualized basis.

For an hourly employee the statute prescribes the arithmetic: the hourly rate multiplied by 40 and by 52.

The figure is fixed in the statute's text; the research records no annual index.

The floor's text is written for an employee; the duration presumption in § 50-1-210(b)(1), by contrast, also names the independent contractor.

Section 50-1-210(d) provides that a court may modify a restrictive covenant governed by the section to render it reasonable and enforceable.

That codifies the position the Tennessee Supreme Court took in Central Adjustment Bureau in 1984, adopting the rule of reasonableness over a strict blue-pencil approach: unless the circumstances indicate bad faith, a court enforces a covenant to the extent reasonably necessary to protect the employer's interest without imposing undue hardship on the employee when the public interest is not adversely affected.

The court also drew a limit: credible evidence that a contract is deliberately unreasonable and oppressive makes the covenant invalid.

The duration presumptions split by capacity.

The two-year employee presumption applies only to a restraint that is not associated with the sale or ownership of all or a material part of a business, professional practice, shares of a corporation, a partnership interest, an LLC membership interest, or other equity.

A veterinarian who owns or sells all or a material part of a practice falls to the seller tier instead: a restraint against the owner or seller of those interests is presumed reasonable up to the longer of five years or the period over which payments are made to the seller.

A covenant signed alongside a buy-in or buy-out can therefore be measured against a different statutory text than an associate's employment covenant, depending on the size of the stake.

Section 50-1-210(c) expressly does not prohibit an employer from enforcing a confidentiality or nondisclosure agreement, a client or customer nonsolicitation agreement, or an employee nonsolicitation agreement, so the section's duration presumptions are not the measure of those clauses.

The research behind this page found no Tennessee decision testing a non-solicitation clause and does not say which test applies to one.

What the common-law line shows about protected interests comes from Hasty, a case about a non-compete: the court recognized trade secrets, confidential information and customer relationships built through repeated contact as legitimate business interests, and declined to enforce Rent-A-Driver's covenant where, by the employer's own proof, its need rested on the loss of drivers to competitors — an injury the court called the ordinary result of competition.

Public Chapter 934 — House Bill 1034, substituted for Senate Bill 995 — passed April 20, 2026, was signed by the Governor on May 7, 2026, and took effect July 1, 2026.

It applies to proceedings occurring and agreements entering into, renewed, or amended on or after that date.

Whether 'proceedings occurring' reaches a covenant signed before July 2026 but litigated after is not resolved by the text, and the research found no Tennessee case construing the new sections.

The Act's caption mentions Titles 50, 63 and 68, but the enacted body adds only §§ 50-1-210 and 50-1-211 and does not amend § 63-1-148.

The research behind this page read the new statute and three Tennessee Supreme Court decisions; it found no case construing §§ 50-1-210 or 50-1-211, no Tennessee appellate decision on a veterinary employment covenant, and no common-law geographic rule stated for a veterinarian's covenant — the statute addresses duration only, and geography stays with the common law's reasonableness inquiry.

How those open questions resolve for a specific contract, including one signed before July 1, 2026, is a question for an attorney who handles veterinary employment agreements in Tennessee.