Veterinary Non-Competes in Washington

RCW 49.62.020(1) voids an employee's non-compete unless several conditions are all met: the employer discloses the covenant's terms in writing by the time the job offer is accepted, or provides independent consideration if it is signed after employment begins; the employee's earnings from the party seeking enforcement, annualized, exceed a threshold adjusted every year — $126,858.83 for 2026; and, if the employee is laid off, the employer keeps paying compensation equivalent to the employee's base salary, minus other earnings, for the covenant to be enforced during that period.

A separate provision, RCW 49.62.030, applies its own earnings threshold to an independent contractor rather than an employee, set at a different base figure and adjusted the same way.

A veterinarian who does not clear the earnings threshold that applies to their own worker classification cannot be bound by a non-compete under this chapter at all; clearing it moves the analysis to the eighteen-month duration test in a separate subsection.

Washington has not enacted a non-compete statute limited to health care practitioners the way some states have for physicians, nurses, or physician assistants.

The general threshold-based rule in RCW 49.62.020 — and, from June 30, 2027, the general ban — applies to a veterinarian the same as it applies to any other worker covered by the chapter.

A veterinarian should not assume that a headline about limits on "healthcare worker" non-competes describes Washington law, because no such carve-out exists here to begin with.

Washington runs two separate earnings thresholds, not one.

RCW 49.62.020(1)(b) sets the employee base figure at one hundred thousand dollars, written into the statute in 2019; RCW 49.62.030 sets a separate base figure of two hundred fifty thousand dollars for an independent contractor.

RCW 49.62.040 requires the Department of Labor & Industries to adjust both figures for inflation every year.

For 2026, the published thresholds are $126,858.83 for an employee and $317,147.09 for an independent contractor — up from 2025's $123,394.17 and $308,485.43.

Once a covenant clears the threshold that applies to the worker's own classification, RCW 49.62.020(2) adds a separate duration test: a restriction exceeding eighteen months is presumptively unreasonable, a presumption the party seeking to enforce it can attempt to rebut.

Both the dollar thresholds and the duration presumption apply only through June 29, 2027.

A 2026 amendment, recorded in the sources read as 2026 c 149 s 4, rewrites RCW 49.62.020 effective June 30, 2027: every non-compete covenant becomes void and unenforceable on that date regardless of when it was signed, and the earnings threshold and eighteen-month duration presumption drop away.

The amendment makes it a violation for an employer to enforce, attempt to enforce, or threaten to enforce a covenant, to represent a worker is bound by one, or to enter into one at all, and requires an employer to notify affected current and former employees and independent contractors, by October 1, 2027, that their covenant is void.

A companion 2026 amendment to RCW 49.62.010(3)(d) also sweeps in any provision requiring a worker to return, repay, or forfeit compensation for competing — reaching signing or retention bonuses and CE clawbacks — except a narrow carve-out for an educational-repayment agreement that expires within 18 months, pro-rates the amount owed, and releases the employee for good cause.

The sources read for this page describe the earnings threshold, the duration presumption, and the 2027 transition to an outright ban; they do not state how a Washington court modifies or narrows an overbroad non-compete.

RCW 49.62.010(4) excludes a covenant tied to buying or selling at least a one-percent interest in a business's goodwill from the chapter's "noncompetition covenant" definition outright, an exclusion that survives June 30, 2027 renumbered as RCW 49.62.010(3)(e)(iv).

The nonsolicitation exclusion is narrower after that date: from June 30, 2027 it protects only a client-solicitation restriction where the veterinarian developed the relationship and the restriction expires within 18 months, and it never covers an agreement barring accepting or transacting business with a client, which instead becomes a noncompetition covenant.

How Washington law otherwise treats a practice-sale covenant or a non-solicitation clause, including whether a court would modify one, is not stated in the sources read.

Those questions matter most at a buy-in or buy-out — take the whole agreement to a Washington attorney who handles veterinary practice transactions.