With Thanksgiving right around the corner, now is the perfect time to reflect on things for which we have to be thankful. In the ever-evolving world of labor and employment law, there have been several significant developments over the past year that employers can appreciate.

Here are five key updates for which we are thankful:

On Wednesday, July 3, a Texas federal court enjoined the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) rule banning most noncompetes (the Noncompete Rule) and has stayed the implementation of the Noncompete Rule, but only as to the plaintiffs involved in that case.

The ruling is “preliminary,” with a subsequent ruling planned on the ultimate merits of the

On April 23, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission issued a broad Final Rule that effectively bans noncompete clauses nationwide. The FTC states that noncompete clauses are an unfair method of competition and violate Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act. This ban does not cover such clauses already in place for senior executives that earn more

If you use non-competes, make sure you complete all the steps to make them enforceable. It may be your practice to ask the employee to sign it and then not sign it yourself. While we seldom see challenges to this practice, the Alabama Supreme Court recently took an unusually close look at this issue, clarifying

Can you still have noncompete agreements with your employees? There has been a lot of buzz about this issue, and this week the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board joined the conversation with a memorandum, GC 23-08, opining that noncompete and nonsolicitation agreements violate the National Labor Relations Act. This continues a

Employment attorneys and employers are well aware that noncompete and nonsolicitation agreements have been under continued scrutiny by states across the country. While the laws vary from state to state, generally, restrictive covenant agreements have become more difficult for employers to enforce when an employee violates their agreements and “thumbs their nose” at threatened enforcement.