In an article posted March 4, the National Law Review outlined the last year of shifts in national policy regulating noncompete agreements in employee contacts.
Here’s a timeline of recent updates regarding the national noncompete ban and other state regulations:
1. In September 2025, Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson said that the agency would not impose a blanket ban on noncompetes in all physician contracts, opting to pursue enforcement actions for noncompete violations industry-by-industry.
2. Since that announcement, the agency has reported two enforcement actions related to noncompetes, according to the report. This includes one action ordering the country’s largest pet cremation business to stop neforcning noncompetes against nearly 1,800 employees; and a second issuance of warning letters to healthcare employers and staffing companies to review their employment agreements to ensure they were in full compliance with the law.
3. On Sept. 5, 2025, Mr. Ferguson and the FTC formally dropped their appeal to the Fifth Circuit, officially ending the effort to issue a national ban on noncompete agreements.
4. The NLR expects to see a continued “trend of sparse enforcement actions” continue into 2026. It also notes that during a noncompete workshop hosted by the FTC in January, the FTC was open for comments about the scope, prevalence and impact of noncompete agreements.
“It remains to be seen what, if anything, the Agency will do substantively to protect workers from noncompete agreements,” the article reads.
5. The NLR further speculates that given the recent Loper Bright decision ruling that an agency’s interpretation where the law is ambiguous is not entitled to deference, as well as the current political climate, it is unlikely that there will be any administrative rulemaking that will affect noncompete agreements on a national scale.
