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

The rule is the same for every role in the practice: the covenant an associate dentist, hygienist or assistant signs is valid and enforceable when the restraint is reasonable under the circumstances, protects a legitimate business interest and is not adverse to the public welfare.

• Case law, not a statute. The governing test comes from Weber v. Tillman, a 1996 Kansas Supreme Court decision that enforced a dermatologist's non-compete and affirmed the injunction.
• Statutory safe harbors for non-solicits. K.S.A. § 50-163 conclusively presumes enforceable a written customer non-solicit limited to material contact customers for up to two years, a co-worker non-solicit that protects confidential information, customer relationships or goodwill or lasts up to two years, and an owner's covenant for up to four years.
• A statutory rewrite duty. Under K.S.A. § 50-163(b), an overbroad covenant outside those presumptions must be modified and enforced as modified — but the statute is not construed to apply to covenants not to compete, so do not count on that duty for your non-compete.

There is no federal rule underneath any of this: the FTC's 2024 non-compete rule never took effect and was removed from the Code of Federal Regulations in February 2026, so non-competes for dental staff nationally live or die on state law.

If you are the clinician rather than the employer, our guide to dentist non-compete agreements covers the worker's side.

For employee non-competes, Kansas law is case law.

The Kansas Supreme Court's 1996 decision in Weber states the rule a Kansas court applies to your associate agreement: a noncompetition covenant ancillary to an employment contract is valid and enforceable if the restraint is reasonable under the circumstances and not adverse to the public welfare.

The same decision sets the limit: only a legitimate business interest may be protected by a non-compete.

The statute that does exist points the other way.

The Kansas Restraint of Trade Act, K.S.A. § 50-163, is expressly not construed to apply to covenants not to compete, so your non-compete stands or falls on common-law reasonableness rather than on a statutory formula; the statute speaks to your contracts through the conclusive presumptions for non-solicits and owner covenants and through the duty to rewrite a covenant outside those presumptions — both covered below.

K.S.A. § 50-163 was amended in 2025 (Laws 2025, ch. 74), effective July 1, 2025.

This research verified the amendment's effective date but not which subsections it changed — read the current statutory text and have Kansas employment counsel confirm how it applies to your contracts.

The leading Kansas case is itself a healthcare case: Weber enforced a physician's non-compete, which is why Kansas has no per se bar on healthcare-provider non-competes.

Nothing in the Kansas rule this page covers — the Weber test and K.S.A. § 50-163 — turns on which license the signer holds: the same reasonableness test covers the associate dentist, the hygienist and the chairside assistant.

On healthcare bans specifically: this research found no enacted Kansas ban on non-competes for healthcare professionals — a proposed ban surfaced only as a bill, not as enacted law.

Bills move — confirm where any healthcare non-compete bill stands with the Kansas Legislature before relying on the point.

Neither is there an income gate.

Under the Kansas law this research verified — the Weber test and the provisions of K.S.A. § 50-163 — enforceability turns on reasonableness and the interest behind the covenant, not on what the employee is paid.

The license behind the signature is its own state-by-state matter — our guide to dentist licensure in Kansas covers that path.

Legitimate business interest.

Kansas courts protect only a legitimate business interest through a non-compete.

For a dental practice, the interest you would point to is the patient base and goodwill your practice built — the relationships that would follow a clinician out the door — not a general wish to thin the local hiring market.

Time and area.

The restraint must also be reasonable under the circumstances and not adverse to the public welfare.

Kansas law gives no fixed safe harbor of months or miles for an employment non-compete the way its statute fixes periods for non-solicits, so the defensible duration and radius are what a court would accept for your facts — draft to the patient base the person actually served.

When the clause is overbroad.

K.S.A. § 50-163(b) requires a court to modify an overbroad covenant outside the statutory presumptions and enforce it as modified, but the same statute is not construed to apply to covenants not to compete.

Do not count on a rewrite to rescue an overbroad non-compete — draft it to pass the Weber test as written.

This is where the Kansas statute does the work for you.

Under K.S.A. § 50-163(c)(5), a written employee covenant not to solicit customers is conclusively presumed enforceable if it is limited to material contact customers and lasts no more than two years after employment ends.

Kansas defines a material contact customer as a customer or prospect the employee solicited, produced or serviced, directly or indirectly, or about whom the employee had confidential information — in a practice, the patients that hygienist or front-desk hire actually managed.

Co-workers are covered too: under K.S.A. § 50-163(c)(4), a written covenant not to solicit co-workers is conclusively presumed enforceable if it protects confidential information, customer relationships or goodwill, or lasts no more than two years after employment.

Owners get longer: under K.S.A. § 50-163(c)(3), an owner's written covenant not to solicit or service the business's material-contact customers is conclusively presumed enforceable for up to four years after the owner's relationship with the business ends — the clause for a partner or an associate buying in.

Confidentiality terms do the complementary work, and federal trade-secret law sets the bar: 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.

Limited logins and no exports to personal accounts are examples of the reasonable measures 18 U.S.C. § 1839 requires.

For clause structure and how other states treat the same terms, see our guide to patient and staff non-solicits.

Kansas gives an employer room, and the leverage is in how you use it:

• Draft to the interest you can prove. Name the patient relationships and goodwill the covenant protects; a restraint wider than that interest reaches beyond what Kansas courts will protect.
• Put the statutory non-solicits in writing. The two-year customer and co-worker presumptions attach to written covenants — build them into the offer, not onboarding paperwork.
• Use the four-year owner covenant where it fits — a partner or equity-holding associate whose departure would pull the practice's patients.
• Keep any non-compete short and tight: with no statutory period behind it, whatever restraint you ask a court to enforce you must defend as reasonable.
• Where you fund training, use a training repayment agreement. It is a separate tool with its own state-law limits — our guide to training repayment agreements covers how they work.

Have Kansas employment counsel review any covenant before it is signed — the 2025 amendment to K.S.A. § 50-163 is recent, and counsel can confirm how the current text applies to your contracts.