Trade Secrets & Employee Mobility

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 ...