Veterinary Non-Competes in Washington, DC

Section 32-581.02(a)(1) starts from an outright ban: an employer may not require or request that a covered employee sign an agreement, or comply with a workplace policy, that includes a non-compete provision.

That ban is the default position for a veterinary associate in the District.

A limited exception exists only for a "highly compensated employee" earning above an annually adjusted income threshold, under § 32-581.03 — for anyone below that threshold, the analysis stops at the ban.

Because the statute builds its exception around income rather than profession, a veterinarian's non-compete is judged on the same income test as any other District employee's.

The ban's only profession-specific carve-out is the "medical specialist" definition, and it is built entirely around human medicine: a highly compensated employee who holds a license to practice medicine, is a physician, and has completed a medical residency.

None of those three elements describes a veterinarian, who is licensed to practice veterinary medicine rather than human medicine and does not complete a medical residency.

A veterinarian who clears the general income threshold therefore falls into the ordinary highly-compensated-employee tier under § 32-581.03, not the medical-specialist tier — which matters because the medical-specialist tier carries both a higher income floor and a longer allowed restriction period.

Below the applicable threshold, § 32-581.02 bans a non-compete outright, so the threshold is the gate to whether a covenant can exist at all.

For 2026, the general highly-compensated-employee threshold is $162,164 per year (up from $158,363 in 2025 and the original 2022 figure of $150,000), CPI-adjusted every January 1; the medical-specialist threshold is $270,274 per year.

Above the relevant threshold, § 32-581.03(a)(1)(C) caps the restriction at 365 calendar days from separation for an ordinary highly compensated employee, or 730 calendar days for a medical specialist — a tier a veterinarian does not qualify for.

Section 32-581.03 also requires the employer to give 14 days' advance written notice of the covenant's terms.

A veterinarian who clears the general threshold is capped at the 365-day figure, not the 730-day one.

The District's original 2021 non-compete ban was narrowed by the 2022 Non-Compete Clarification Amendment Act, effective September 21, 2022, with the ban itself applying beginning October 1, 2022 — that Act is what added the highly-compensated-employee and medical-specialist exceptions described above.

Since then, the income thresholds have moved every January 1 under a CPI adjustment rather than staying fixed at the amounts written into the 2021 or 2022 text.

For a veterinarian checking whether they clear the threshold today, the current-year figure is the one that matters, not the number originally enacted.

The sources read for this page do not address how a District court modifies or blue-pencils an overbroad non-compete, how a covenant tied to selling a veterinary practice or an ownership interest is treated, or how client and staff non-solicitation clauses are handled.

Those gaps are left blank rather than filled from another jurisdiction's rule.

They matter most for a veterinarian buying into or selling out of a District practice, where a covenant is often drafted alongside the purchase terms — take the whole agreement to a District of Columbia attorney.