Trade Secrets & Employee Mobility

As we previously reported, Virginia recently enacted Senate Bill 170 (“the Act”), which takes effect July 1, 2026, and expands the Commonwealth’s existing restrictions on noncompete agreements by rendering such agreements void and unenforceable when an employer terminates an employee without cause. On May 14, 2026, by way of Senate Bill 128 (“SB 128” or the “Amendment”), Virginia broadened the Act to prohibit noncompetes for “health care professionals, ” effective July 1, 2026.

When the calendar turns to July 2024, staffing agencies, home health agencies and other service providers operating in Minnesota are going to experience a considerable change in the legal landscape of that state, which could affect their motivation to continue doing business there. 

On July 1, 2024, a new Minnesota law (MN SF 3852) goes into effect, prohibiting any service provider (defined as a business “acting directly or indirectly as an employer or manager for work contracted or requested by a customer”), from restricting, restraining or prohibiting in any way that customer from directly or indirectly soliciting or hiring an employee of the service provider.  

For many of us, summer holidays are over, the kids are back in school, and it is a good time to take stock of languishing items on our to-do lists.  For employers that have restrictive covenant agreements with employees in Georgia, one of those to-do items should be to review the employee non-solicitation provisions in their employment agreements.

Earlier this summer, in North American Senior Benefits v. Wimmer, the Georgia Court of Appeals issued a decision that likely will make it substantially more challenging for employers to enforce employee non-solicitation provisions.  That ...