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

Mississippi measures the covenants your associate dentists, hygienists, assistants and front-office staff sign by its court decisions — our research found no state statute to draft to.

Four results matter:

• Reasonable covenants hold. The Mississippi Supreme Court calls restrictive covenants restraints of trade and "not favorites of the law" — valid unless unreasonable, and enforceable when reasonable.
• Overbroad territory got trimmed, not tossed. In Redd Pest Control (1963), a statewide territory was enforced only as to its reasonable part.
• No dentist-specific statute found. Our research found no Mississippi statute written for dentists, dental staff or other healthcare workers as of our October 2026 check.
• No federal fallback. The Federal Trade Commission's non-compete rule never took effect — a federal court set it aside — and it was removed from the Code of Federal Regulations in February 2026.

Our research found no Mississippi statute governing employee non-competes as of our October 2026 check — the rules live in Mississippi Supreme Court opinions.

The framing sentence comes from Frierson v. Sheppard Building Supply (1963), quoted in Texas Road Boring Co. v. Parker (Mississippi Supreme Court, 1967): "These restrictive contracts are in restraint of trade and individual freedom and are not favorites of the law.

But they are valid unless unreasonable, and when reasonable, the courts will not hesitate to hold the parties to their contracts."

Redd Pest Control Co. v. Heatherly (Mississippi Supreme Court, 1963) applied the standard to territory: a covenant reaching the whole state was enforced only as to its reasonable part — and the court said a Tupelo-plus-50-mile restriction would have been reasonable.

Texas Road Boring went the other way in 1967 and upheld a statewide limit: the employee's activities had covered the entirety of Mississippi, so the restraint was not unreasonable as to territory, and the court ordered an injunction.

Neither case involved dentistry — they were pest control and road boring — but the reasonableness rule the Mississippi Supreme Court states in them is about restrictive covenants generally, not one industry.

Our research for this page found no Mississippi statute written for non-competes for dentists, dental staff or other healthcare workers as of our October 2026 check — a research finding, not settled law.

On this research, an associate dentist's covenant lands in the same case-by-case reasonableness review as any other employee's — none of the Mississippi decisions we reviewed involved a dental practice.

The one healthcare covenant in this research is HeartSouth, PLLC v. Boyd (Mississippi Supreme Court, 2003), a cardiologist's non-compete: the court resolved the case on the contract's expiry and did not decide whether the physician covenant was contrary to public policy.

No special rule for medical covenants came out of it — and nothing in it singles dentists out.

Texas, for example, has a statute written for dentists: a non-compete relating to the practice of dentistry is unenforceable against a Texas-licensed dentist unless the buyout is no greater than the dentist's total annual salary and wages at termination, it expires within one year after termination, it covers no more than a 5-mile radius from where the dentist primarily practiced, and it states its terms clearly and conspicuously in writing.

The full map is covered in our guide to non-competes for dental staff nationally.

The standard.

Mississippi courts ask whether the covenant is reasonable; nothing our research reviewed supplies a statutory maximum of years or miles for a dental practice, so reasonableness is argued case by case.

Area.

The two territory rulings in this research: Tupelo plus a 50-mile radius would have been reasonable in Redd Pest Control, while the statewide restraint in Texas Road Boring held because the work covered the entire state.

Write the restricted area to match where this hygienist, assistant or associate will actually serve.

Time.

These decisions turned on territory and, in HeartSouth, on the contract's expiry — none sets a number of months or years.

Keep the term no longer than the protection is worth, and let counsel size it.

A non-solicit restricts whom a departing team member may target — your patients, your staff — rather than where they may work, so it pairs with a narrow non-compete instead of widening it.

One research limit: the Mississippi decisions we reviewed deal with non-competition covenants, and our sources did not settle how Mississippi courts treat patient non-solicits specifically — draft them to the same reasonableness standard and narrowness.

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 a patient list counts as 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 prevent a person from taking a new job; conditions on that job must rest on evidence of threatened misappropriation, not merely on what the person knows.

For how these clauses are structured, see our guide to patient and staff non-solicits.

• Size the territory to reality. Tupelo plus a 50-mile radius was the reasonable version in Redd Pest Control — write the radius around where this employee will actually treat patients.
• Keep the term short. No decision in this research supplies a safe number of years — the longer the restriction, the more of the argument you hand the other side.
• Draft so the covenant stands without judicial repair. The trimming in Redd Pest Control came in a 1963 pest-control case — treat it as a last resort, not a drafting plan.
• Pair it with patient and staff non-solicits and confidentiality terms instead of stretching the non-compete itself — and keep real limits on access to the patient list so trade-secret law has something to protect.
• Protect training spend separately. If you fund a course or credential for a hygienist or assistant, our guide to training repayment agreements covers how they work.

Before signature, confirm the clinician's credential — dentist licensure in Mississippi covers what an associate needs — and put the covenant in front of a Mississippi employment attorney.

On the clinician side of the negotiation, dentist non-compete agreements covers the worker's view.