Noncompete agreements have been narrowing for years, state by state, and the direction of travel is one way. If you employ people in more than one state, the practical question is no longer whether your noncompetes will survive, but what you are relying on them to do and whether anything else can do it.
Washington's ban is the clearest current example, and it carries a deadline worth knowing about even if you have no Washington employees — because the shape of it is what other states tend to copy.
Washington has restricted noncompetition agreements since 2020, when the state imposed salary thresholds and notice requirements. Employers adapted by writing agreements that cleared the threshold. That workaround stops working.
HB 1155, signed on 23 March 2026, makes noncompetition covenants unenforceable in Washington as of 30 June 2027. The salary thresholds stop mattering, because there is no longer a salary level at which a noncompete is permitted.
It Reaches Agreements You Already Signed
The most consequential feature is that the law is not limited to new agreements. It voids covered noncompetes regardless of when they were signed. A covenant executed in 2019 with an executive still on your payroll is void on 30 June 2027, and so is one signed last month.
There is a narrow window beforehand. The statute does not apply to proceedings commenced before 30 June 2027. An employer with a live dispute therefore has a reason to act rather than wait. That is a decision to make deliberately with counsel, not a reason to start litigation you would not otherwise bring.
The Notice Requirement Most Employers Will Miss
By 1 October 2027, employers must notify in writing every worker whose noncompete the law voids. That includes former workers.
Read that again, because it is the obligation most likely to be overlooked. The notice list is not your current roster. It is everyone still bound by a covenant you issued, which means reconstructing records from HR files, old offer letters, equity documents, and any company you have acquired along the way.
Start the List Now
This is the one obligation here that takes real lead time, and it is a records problem rather than a legal one. Identifying former employees who signed noncompetes is considerably easier in early 2027 than it will be in the weeks before the October deadline.
What Still Works
A ban on noncompetes is not a ban on protecting the business. Three tools survive.
Nonsolicitation agreements remain available, but narrowed. Commentators reading the statute put the limit at 18 months after termination, with the definition to be construed narrowly.
Confidentiality obligations are untouched. A well-drafted NDA covering genuinely confidential information does most of what employers imagine a noncompete does.
Trade secret protection under state and federal law continues to apply, and does not depend on an agreement at all — though it does depend on your having treated the information as secret.
The Nonsolicitation Trap
If nonsolicitation is your fallback, draft it carefully. Practitioners reviewing the statute have flagged that a clause preventing a former employee from accepting business, as opposed to soliciting it, may be treated as a prohibited noncompete rather than a permitted nonsolicit.
That distinction decides whether the clause survives. "You may not solicit our customers" is a different instrument from "you may not do business with our customers," even though the second is usually what the employer actually wants.
Tuition Repayment, Clawbacks and Forfeitures
The law also reaches arrangements that work like noncompetes without being labelled as one. Training repayment obligations, clawbacks and forfeiture provisions are within its scope. Tuition reimbursement terms are carved out only where they fit a narrow bona fide educational expense exception; otherwise they are void on the same date.
If you employ people in New York as well, the two states are converging here from different directions, and the New York compliance date lands first. New York's Trapped at Work Act covers much the same ground for repayment clauses.
What To Do Before June
Inventory the agreements. Employment agreements, offer letters, equity documents, separation agreements, and anything inherited through an acquisition. You are looking for every restrictive covenant, not only the ones labelled "noncompete."
Build the notice list, including former employees. Start this early for the reasons above.
Rewrite templates now, so you are not issuing void clauses to people you hire between now and the effective date.
Move the protection you actually need into confidentiality terms, trade secret hygiene, and a nonsolicitation clause drafted with the acceptance problem in mind.
Decide deliberately whether any live dispute is worth commencing before 30 June 2027, rather than discovering the window after it closes.
Reviewing Your Restrictive Covenants
If your agreements contain noncompetes, nonsolicits, or repayment clauses, they need review before these dates. Start with a consultation.
Schedule a Consultation →If You Employ People Outside Washington
The useful exercise is not state-by-state tracking. It is working out what your noncompetes are actually for, because the answer is usually one of three things, and only one of them needs a noncompete.
If the concern is confidential information walking out, that is a confidentiality and trade secret problem, and those protections hold everywhere.
If the concern is customers following a departing salesperson, that is a nonsolicitation question, and nonsolicits survive in most states with drafting care.
If the concern is a key person joining a competitor, that is the one a noncompete was genuinely doing, and it is the one disappearing. Retention, equity vesting, and notice periods are the remaining tools.
Companies that have done that sorting exercise find that most of what they wanted is available without a noncompete. Companies that have not tend to discover it under time pressure.
The Bottom Line
Most employers will read the June 2027 date and file this for later. The date that should go in the calendar is 1 October 2027, because the notice obligation requires records you may not have assembled in years.
A note on sources: the bill appears as HB 1155, ESHB 1155 and SHB 1155 in different write-ups, all referring to the same measure, and some commentary raises the possibility of a legal challenge. Confirm the specifics against the enacted text before acting on any summary, including this one.