Veterinary Non-Competes in Vermont

Vermont's Title 21, Chapter 5 — the state's general employment-law title — was checked in full and contains no provision governing non-compete agreements, and a commonly-assumed 2021 low-wage-worker non-compete law does not appear to exist.

In that gap, Vermont courts apply an ordinary common-law reasonableness test, drawn from Vermont Electric Supply Co. v.

Andrus and Roy's Orthopedic, Inc. v.

Lavigne.

For an associate reading an offer, that means there is no statutory checklist to hold the covenant against — a Vermont court weighs the same kind of reasonableness question courts in statute-based states apply, just without a legislature's specific numbers to start from.

A bill introduced in 2026, H.583, would have added a chapter voiding non-competes for "licensees" defined as physicians, APRNs and PAs — a definition that would not have reached veterinarians even if it had passed.

It did not: the enacted Act 133 instead adds 18 V.S.A. chapter 233, covering private-equity and hedge-fund control over clinical decision-making, and contains no non-compete provision of any kind.

So the question of whether a Vermont healthcare non-compete law covers veterinarians has no statute to answer it either way — physicians, APRNs, PAs and veterinarians are all under the same common-law reasonableness test described above.

Because no Vermont statute governs non-competes, there is no wage or pay level written into law below which a veterinarian's covenant cannot bind them.

Duration and geography work the same way: rather than a fixed number of months or miles, Vermont's common-law test asks whether the time and territory a covenant covers are reasonable under the circumstances.

For a relief veterinarian or an associate comparing offers, that means a covenant's length and radius are judged case by case, not checked against a statutory number.

H.583 as introduced proposed that "a noncompetition agreement between a licensee and an employer or other entity is void and unenforceable," with "licensee" defined to include physicians, APRNs and PAs.

That subdivision was removed before the bill passed, and the enacted Act 133 — signed June 15, 2026, effective July 1, 2026 — has no non-compete section at all.

Some secondary sources reported the bill's introduced language as if it were now law; it is not.

This page describes the enacted text, not the introduced bill, and the research behind it did not read any Vermont case or statute addressing how a covenant tied to selling a practice or an ownership interest, or a client or staff non-solicitation clause, is treated — take those questions to a Vermont attorney with the whole agreement in hand.