Are Non-Competes Enforceable for Dentists and Dental Staff in Florida?

The friendly answer covers every role in the practice: licensed dentists and hygienists stay under Florida's general restrictive-covenant statute — the physician-specific rule does not reach them — and this research found no Florida rule treating dental assistants differently.

• Written and signed, or nothing. A court shall not enforce a covenant that is not in a writing signed by the person against whom enforcement is sought.
• A protected interest, or void. You must prove a legitimate business interest — the statute expressly includes substantial relationships with specific patients and patient goodwill.
• Short terms are the safe harbor. Courts presume 6 months or less reasonable and more than 2 years unreasonable for a former employee.
• Courts rewrite rather than kill. An overbroad or overlong covenant must be modified to grant only the relief reasonably necessary.

The 2025 CHOICE Act is the recent wrinkle: its up-to-4-year covenants expressly exclude licensed dentists and hygienists, so those roles stay under the rules below.

Florida's rule is statutory, and it leans toward enforcement.

Section 542.335 enforces restrictive covenants that are reasonable in time, area and line of business — but only when set out in a writing signed by the person against whom enforcement is sought.

An unsigned covenant fails on that gate alone, however reasonable its terms.

The second gate is the interest.

The party seeking enforcement must prove a legitimate business interest, and the statute's list expressly includes substantial relationships with specific prospective or existing patients — patient goodwill, in a dental practice's language.

Without one, the covenant is void.

There is no federal rule underneath any of this: the FTC's 2024 non-compete rule was set aside in federal court, never took effect, and was removed from the Code of Federal Regulations in February 2026, so a Florida covenant lives or dies on § 542.335.

How other states handle dental covenants — bans, dentist-specific statutes, income thresholds — is covered in our guide to non-competes for dental staff nationally.

This research surfaced two Florida healthcare-specific non-compete laws; neither tightens what a dental practice can do.

The first, § 542.336, applies to physicians licensed under chapter 458 or 459 who practice a medical specialty in a county where one entity employs or contracts with them.

It does not apply to dentists.

The second is the 2025 CHOICE Act (Florida Statutes §§ 542.41–542.45), effective July 1, 2025.

It covers employees earning more than twice the annual mean wage of the relevant Florida county and allows covered noncompete agreements of up to 4 years, enforceable only with written notice of the right to counsel, the employee's acknowledgment of receiving confidential information or customer relationships, and delivery at least 7 days before the offer expired.

It expressly excludes anyone classified as a health care practitioner under § 456.001.

That exclusion is what matters to you.

The § 456.001(4) definition of health care practitioner includes persons licensed under chapter 466 — Florida's dentistry and dental hygiene practice act — so licensed Florida dentists and hygienists are excluded from the CHOICE Act, and their covenants remain under § 542.335.

If you have read that Florida now allows 4-year non-competes, that route is not open for your dentists or hygienists.

The CHOICE line is licensure, not role.

Unlicensed dental assistants and front-office staff are not excluded by that route, and the wage gate still applies — the act never reaches an employee earning at or below twice the county annual mean wage.

Whether an unlicensed assistant above that threshold is a covered employee was not resolved in this research — an open question for your Florida employment counsel.

That licensure is the hinge — our guide to dentist licensure in Florida covers what it requires.

Time.

For a covenant against a former employee — an associate, hygienist or assistant who did not buy in — Florida courts presume a restraint of 6 months or less reasonable and one of more than 2 years unreasonable.

Sale-of-practice covenants get a longer runway: tied to the sale of all or part of a professional practice's assets or an equity interest in one, 3 years or less is presumed reasonable and more than 7 years unreasonable.

Presumptions, not caps — the court's tool for an overlong term is modification.

Area.

The covenant must be reasonable in area, but the presumptions above cover duration only.

Match the radius to the patient base you are protecting.

Legitimate business interest.

You carry the proof, and in a dental practice it is the specific patient relationships and goodwill the statute names — not competition in the abstract.

What the court weighs.

A Florida court may not consider individualized economic hardship to the employee, but must consider the effect of enforcement on public health, safety and welfare.

When a clause is overbroad or overlong, the court must modify the restraint and grant only the relief reasonably necessary — overbroad drafting costs you litigation, not necessarily the protection.

A non-solicit restricts who a departing employee may contact — patients or staff — rather than where they may work.

For patients, the interest it protects is the one Florida's statute names for a dental practice: substantial relationships with specific patients.

This research did not surface a Florida statute or decision treating patient non-solicits separately from other restrictive covenants, so have your employment attorney confirm how § 542.335 reaches your clause — prudent drafting applies the same discipline: writing, signature, and no more restraint than the interest requires.

Confidentiality terms do the complementary work.

Under the Defend Trade Secrets Act, the owner of a misappropriated trade secret related to a product or service in interstate commerce can sue in federal court — but business information, including a patient list, is a trade secret only if you took reasonable measures to keep it secret and it has independent economic value from not being generally known.

A DTSA injunction may not block someone from taking a new job, and conditions on new employment must rest on evidence of threatened misappropriation, not merely on what the person knows — so keep the patient list genuinely secret: limited logins, no exports to personal accounts.

For how patient and staff non-solicits are structured, and how other states treat them, see our guide to patient and staff non-solicits.

Florida's statute rewards precision — the leverage is in the drafting and the protections around the covenant:

• Draft to the presumptions. Keep an employment covenant at 6 months or less where the goodwill allows; the longer presumptions belong to sale-of-practice covenants.
• Sign at the offer, in writing. The signature gate is absolute — build it into the offer workflow, not onboarding paperwork.
• Build the record of the interest. Schedules and production records showing which patient relationships a clinician holds are your proof.
• Layer non-solicits and confidentiality terms alongside any non-compete, and keep the patient list genuinely secret.
• Use training repayment agreements where you fund training — a separate tool with its own state-law limits; our guide to training repayment agreements covers how they work.
• Know what the covenant does not control. Patient records sit under separate Florida Board of Dentistry rules: a dentist who terminates or relocates a practice must keep records available to patients for 4 years after the last exam or treatment, and copies go out on request — generally within 30 days — even if the patient owes money.

Have a Florida employment attorney review any covenant before it is signed — and if you are the clinician side of this negotiation, our guide to dentist non-compete agreements covers the worker's view.