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

Maryland sorts your staff into three tiers, and the covenant falls in two of them:

• At or below 150% of the State minimum wage: the non-compete is null and void. This is the tier that covers a dental assistant or front-office employee paid at or below that line.
• Required to be licensed under the Health Occupations Article, providing direct patient care, at $350,000 or less in total annual compensation: also null and void — but only for employment contracts executed on or after July 1, 2025.
• Above $350,000: a covenant is allowed, but capped at 1 year from the last day of employment and 10 miles from the primary place of employment.

A covered non-compete is void as against the public policy of the State, and the rule applies whether or not you and the employee signed the contract inside Maryland — the statute has already taken the clause off the table.

For an employed associate or hygienist, the analysis is short: find the tier.

If you are the associate weighing what you signed, our guide to dentist non-compete agreements covers the worker's side — this page is the employer's Maryland view.

How other states treat dental covenants is in our guide to non-competes for dental staff nationally.

The rule is statutory.

Maryland Code, Labor & Employment §3-716 is where both the wage-based void rule and the health-care tiers live, and §3-716(a)(3) declares a covered non-compete or conflict-of-interest provision null and void as being against the public policy of the State — the clause is void by the statute's own terms.

The health-care tiers are recent: 2024 Laws of Maryland, Chapter 378 (HB 1388), approved April 25, 2024, added them, and they apply only to employment contracts executed on or after July 1, 2025 — covenants signed before that date sit outside those provisions.

The statute also says the subsection applies whether or not the employment contract was entered into in Maryland, which is worth knowing before a multi-state group assumes its home-state contract form travels.

Federal law does not change the picture.

The Federal Trade Commission's 2024 Non-Compete Clause Rule was set aside by a federal district court and never took effect, and in a final rule published February 12, 2026 the agency removed it from the Code of Federal Regulations — so as of October 2026 there is no federal rule banning employee non-competes, including at dental practices.

The agency says it can still challenge individual non-competes case by case when they are unjustified, overbroad or anticompetitive.

The health-care ban is keyed to licensure, and that is what makes it bite in a dental office.

Under Maryland Code, Health Occupations §4-301(a), an individual must be licensed by the State Board of Dental Examiners to practice dentistry — and, except as the title otherwise provides, to practice dental hygiene — in Maryland.

Put the pieces together: an employed associate dentist or dental hygienist who provides direct patient care and earns $350,000 or less in total annual compensation is inside the void rule for contracts executed on or after July 1, 2025.

Credentialing the hire while you paper the agreement?

Our guide to dentist licensure in Maryland covers the licensing path.

Dental assistants sit differently.

Health Occ. §4-301(b)(5) exempts from licensure a dental assistant who performs only procedures that do not require a licensed dentist's professional skills and performs permitted intraoral procedures under a dentist's direct supervision.

An unlicensed assistant in that position is probably outside the $350,000 health-care ban — for them, the tier that matters is the wage rule at or below 150% of the State minimum wage.

Whether an assistant who holds a Board certification counts as required to be licensed was not settled in the research behind this page, so treat that as a question for counsel rather than a drafting assumption.

For the group Maryland still lets you bind — licensed direct-patient-care employees earning more than $350,000 — the statute states the requirements as fixed caps:

• Time: the non-compete may not exceed 1 year from the last day of employment.
• Area: the geographic restriction may not exceed 10 miles from the primary place of employment.

Draft inside both and the covenant fits the statute; run past either and you are outside what §3-716 allows for that group.

Ten miles from the primary office is a tight radius — in the Baltimore–Washington corridor it may not clear the next suburb.

What about everyone the tiers do not reach — an associate on a contract executed before July 1, 2025, a practice administrator, a departing owner?

The research behind this page did not cover how Maryland courts apply common-law reasonableness to covenants outside the statute, or how far a court may rewrite an overbroad clause.

Have Maryland employment counsel review anything outside the statute's text before you rely on it.

The most useful sentence in §3-716 for a practice owner is the carve-out: the subsection does not apply to provisions about the taking or use of a client or patient list or other proprietary client-related or patient-related information.

Even where the covenant is void, the statute leaves room for contract language about your patient-related information — what the practice defines, restricts and requires back.

Patient and staff non-solicits do different work: they restrict who a departing employee may contact, not where they may work.

The research behind this page verified the patient-information carve-out but did not verify a Maryland statute that specifically regulates patient or employee non-solicitation clauses — a gap in the research, not a green light.

Have counsel review the exact language before you rely on one, and see our guide to patient and staff non-solicits for clause structure.

Two more pieces belong in your process:

• The patient-request duty. On a patient's request, the employer of a licensed direct-patient-care employee earning more than $350,000 — the group whose covenants §3-716(b) caps — must provide notice of the new location where the former employee will be practicing. Make sure the front desk knows who sends that answer.
• Trade-secret protection behind the patient list. Under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, business information — including a compilation such as 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 cannot bar a person from taking a new job; conditions on the new employment must rest on evidence of threatened misappropriation, not merely on what the person knows.

Maryland's statute narrows what a covenant can do, not what a practice can protect.

The workable pieces:

• Match the paper to the tier before anyone signs. At or below the wage line, or a licensed direct-patient-care hire at $350,000 or less on a contract executed on or after July 1, 2025, a covenant buys you nothing. Above $350,000, draft inside 1 year and 10 miles.
• Use the carve-out deliberately. Keep patient-list and patient-related proprietary information provisions in their own clause: define the information, restrict its taking and use, and require its return at departure.
• Put the transition in the agreement itself. A notice period, a records-custody plan and a handover protocol are terms the parties can agree to directly — they protect continuity of care and your schedule without restraining where someone works next.
• Shift tools where training is the worry. Where you fund a course or a mentorship, training repayment agreements are a separate instrument with their own rules — review that guide before drafting one into a Maryland offer.
• Build the patient-request answer into offboarding. Decide who responds when a patient asks where a former clinician in the over-$350,000 group now practices, and what the response says.
• Have Maryland employment counsel review the final language — especially anything outside §3-716's tiers, where the enforceability question is case law this page did not cover.