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

Enforceable in principle, unforgiving in practice.

Nebraska's rule comes from the courts rather than any statute we found: every covenant is judged case by case under the Nebraska Supreme Court's reasonableness test.

Two consequences follow for a dental practice.

First, precision beats breadth: a covenant that reaches patients or territory the departing clinician never actually touched risks failing entirely, because Nebraska courts will not rewrite it down to size.

Second, the new Nebraska healthcare law in this space — LB 921, operative July 1, 2027 — restricts health care staffing agencies, not a practice employing its own associate dentists, hygienists or assistants.

For the national picture beyond Nebraska, see our guide to non-competes for dental staff nationally.

As of our October 2026 check, no Nebraska statute governing employee non-competes generally had been found.

The controlling rules come from the Nebraska Supreme Court, most clearly in H & R Block Tax Servs. v. Circle A Enters., decided in 2005.

There is no federal backstop either.

The Federal Trade Commission's 2024 non-compete rule never took effect — a federal court set it aside — and the FTC removed the rule from the Code of Federal Regulations on February 12, 2026, so there is no federal rule banning employee non-competes, including for dental practices.

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

Nebraska's recent healthcare legislation in this area does not do what you may have heard.

Legislative Bill 921 (2026) provides, in Section 11, that a health care staffing agency shall not include in any contract with a worker or health care entity a noncompete clause restricting the worker's employment opportunities.

The definition decides who is bound: LB 921 defines a health care staffing agency as an entity that provides temporary workers to provide direct services in a separate, third-party health care entity.

A dental practice that employs its own associate dentists, hygienists and assistants does not fit that description, so the statute does not reach your own employment agreements.

If you use temporary staff, timing matters: LB 921's staffing-agency sections — Sections 7 through 15, including the non-compete ban — become operative July 1, 2027.

Secondary reports say Governor Jim Pillen signed the bill on April 14, 2026; the enacted bill text we reviewed does not show the signature date, so confirm against the legislature's record.

If you staff through an agency, ask how its worker contracts change from that date.

One honest gap: our research did not include a published Nebraska decision applying the test to a dental associate's covenant specifically.

The general case law governs until a court speaks to your fact pattern — one more reason to have a Nebraska employment attorney review the language.

H & R Block frames the test:

On goodwill — for a practice, the patient base — Nebraska draws a narrow line: a customer-goodwill covenant is valid only if it restricts the former employee from working for or soliciting clients with whom the employee actually did business and had personal contact.

For your practice, that points to the patients the departing clinician actually treated and knew — not the whole active patient list, and not a radius on a map.

Then the part that makes Nebraska unforgiving.

The Nebraska Supreme Court has long held that it is not the function of courts to reform a covenant not to compete in order to make it enforceable, and it must be enforced as written or not at all — even where the contract purports to authorize the court to reform it (CAE Vanguard v. Newman (1994), as quoted in H & R Block).

What that means for years and miles: the cases cited above give no formula — no maximum term, no safe radius.

Breadth is judged against the interest you actually need protected, and overbreadth costs you the whole covenant rather than a trimmed version.

Take the shortest term and the smallest patient scope that protect it.

Whichever restraint you write, H & R Block shows the shape of a restriction Nebraska tolerates: one protecting relationships the employee actually had.

A patient non-solicit is the narrower tool — it restricts who a departing employee may contact, not where they may work — and the clients-actually-served line above is the standard to draft it to.

Our guide to patient and staff non-solicits covers how these clauses are structured.

For the patient list itself, the route is federal trade-secret law.

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 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.

And a DTSA injunction cannot stop a former employee from taking a new job: conditions on new employment must rest on evidence of threatened misappropriation, not merely on what the person knows.

• Draft to the patients, not the map. Scope any covenant to clients the departing clinician actually did business with and had personal contact with, and keep the term and area to what protecting those relationships requires.
• Assume there is no fix-it pass. Nebraska courts enforce a covenant as written or not at all, so every patient, mile or month the role will never touch is risk you added for nothing.
• Put the narrower tools first. Patient and staff non-solicits plus confidentiality terms protect the same interests with far less to attack.
• If you are buying or selling a practice, note the direction the case law leans: Nebraska courts are generally more willing to uphold promises to refrain from competition made in the sale of goodwill as a business asset than in employment contracts.
• Where you fund a course or credential, our guide to training repayment agreements covers a different tool and its limits.
• Write operational terms into the agreement — notice period, patient-record custody, schedule handover — so continuity never depends on winning a covenant dispute.
• Check the license before the replacement starts: dentist licensure in Nebraska covers what an associate needs before day one.

Have a Nebraska employment attorney review any covenant before the offer goes out.

And if you are the one being asked to sign, dentist non-compete agreements covers the worker's side nationally.