Employers hate losing good workers in this sellers' market
for employees. Such business needs often spawn reliance on
non-competition/non-solicitation agreements sometimes designed to
discourage workers from leaving.
State legislatures correctly view such overreaching as often
unfair and have been in the process of limiting employers'
ability to impose non-competes on lower-level workers. Indeed, the
courts also recognize that the only legitimate basis for
non-competition obligations on the part of employees stand rooted
in trade secrets and customer relationships, not merely the desire
to lock in employees as if they were indentured servants. As a
matter of U.S. constitutional law, no legal basis exists for
indentured servitude in any form—see the Thirteenth
Amendment!
