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

Often, yes — if the covenant is reasonable.

The research for this guide found no New Jersey statute governing employee non-competes, so enforceability rests on court decisions — and a New Jersey court may enforce a covenant in total or only in part, to the extent it is reasonable.

That has been the rule since 1970.

So an overbroad clause is not automatically worthless — but a narrow one gives a court nothing to trim, and is the cheaper position to defend.

The same case-law test decides covenants for every role on your roster.

Nothing in the research singles out dental work: no statute was found that treats an associate dentist, a hygienist, a chairside assistant or a front-desk hire differently, in either direction — no statutory escape hatch for the clinician, no healthcare-specific ban for the practice to fight through.

This page is the employer's New Jersey view.

If you are the dentist who was handed a covenant to sign, that is the worker's side of the question — see our guide to dentist non-compete agreements.

Start with what does not govern.

The FTC's 2024 Non-Compete Clause Rule was set aside in court and never took effect, and in a final rule published February 12, 2026 the FTC removed it from the Code of Federal Regulations — so as of October 7, 2026 there is no federal rule banning employee non-competes at a dental practice.

The FTC says it can still challenge individual non-competes case by case under Section 5 of the FTC Act when they are unjustified, overbroad or anticompetitive.

How other states handle dental covenants: see our guide to non-competes for dental staff nationally.

In New Jersey, the rules are judge-made: the research for this guide found no New Jersey statute governing employee non-competes as of October 6, 2026 — a research finding, not a certification, so counsel can confirm the current state of the law — which means the test your covenant has to pass comes from two New Jersey Supreme Court decisions.

The first is Solari Industries v Malady, decided in 1970.

There the New Jersey Supreme Court abandoned the state's old void-per-se rule — the approach under which a non-compete simply failed — and adopted total or partial enforcement of non-competes to the extent reasonable under the circumstances.

Practically, that means a New Jersey court is not limited to upholding your clause or killing it; it can enforce the piece that is reasonable.

The second is Community Hospital Group v More, decided in 2005, where the court stated the test New Jersey applies to a restrictive covenant: it is enforceable if it “protects the legitimate interests of the employer, imposes no undue hardship on the employee, and is not injurious to the public.”

The next two sections turn that sentence into drafting questions.

The research for this guide found no New Jersey dentist-specific statute to draft around — in either direction.

No New Jersey statute specifically restricting non-competes for dentists, dental staff or other health care workers was found as of October 7, 2026, and no income threshold was found either — income thresholds arrive by statute, and no governing New Jersey statute was found.

For contrast, Illinois bars non-competes against employees earning $75,000 a year or less, rising to $80,000 on January 1, 2027.

No equivalent New Jersey gate was found by this research, so a front-desk hire's covenant stands before the same reasonableness test as an associate's.

The closest thing to a healthcare rule is a healthcare case.

Community Hospital Group v More involved a covenant between a hospital and a physician, and the New Jersey Supreme Court held that a restrictive covenant in that setting is not per se unreasonable and unenforceable — so clinical credentials did not keep that covenant out of court.

But More is also a warning about scope.

The court found the physician covenant's geographic area excessive and reduced it to avoid harm to the public interest — a signal that when the covenanted worker is a clinician, patients' access to care gets weight.

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

No New Jersey equivalent was found by this research — which leaves the case-law test, and the next section's questions, as your drafting target.

New Jersey's test is the More sentence, turned into three questions you should be able to answer in writing before you draft:

• Legitimate interests of the employer. What is the covenant protecting? Name it — the patients this associate will treat, the office you just equipped, the referral relationships your practice built. A covenant that protects nothing you can point to is the easiest one to lose.
• No undue hardship on the employee. Can the person still earn a living? A clause that locks a hygienist out of every practice in the county invites this question; a shorter restriction tied to the office where they actually work is easier to defend.
• Not injurious to the public. For dental care, this is patients' access to treatment. More is the illustration: the court cut the covenant's geography because of the public interest, and in a dental practice the public most directly at stake is your patients.

How much time and how many miles?

The research for this guide found no New Jersey statute setting a maximum term or a bright-line radius — with the rules coming from case law, the boundaries are decided case by case.

This guide's research also did not collect the later New Jersey decisions applying the test, so have counsel check your specific term and radius against New Jersey case law before the template goes out.

Solari's partial-enforcement rule has a seductive edge: an overbroad covenant may still be enforced in part, so why not draft wide and let the judge trim?

Because the court's version protects what the judge thinks your practice needed, not what you wrote — and litigating to find out is the expensive outcome careful drafting is supposed to avoid.

A non-solicit restricts who a departing employee may contact — your patients, your staff — rather than where they may work, and it is written as its own clause, separate from any non-compete.

This guide's research covers New Jersey's non-compete case law, not how New Jersey courts treat non-solicitation clauses specifically, so treat the enforceability of a given clause as a question for your counsel — and see patient and staff non-solicits for how these clauses are structured and where they meet your duties to patients.

Confidentiality is the quieter protection, and it is federal.

Under the Defend Trade Secrets Act, a patient list is a trade secret only if the owner took reasonable measures to keep it secret and it has independent economic value from not being generally known — which is why access controls and signed confidentiality terms matter: they are the record you would point to.

The DTSA lets the owner of a misappropriated trade secret related to a product or service in interstate commerce sue in federal court, but an injunction may not prevent a person from entering into an employment relationship, and conditions placed on the new employment must rest on evidence of threatened misappropriation, not merely on the information the person knows.

New Jersey's case-law system rewards the practice that drafts narrowly and layers its protections:

• Draft to the test, not past it. Name the legitimate interest, keep the term short, and draw the area from where your patients actually travel. The narrower the clause, the less a court has to do to it.
• Expect the public-interest question for clinicians. More cut a physician covenant's geography to protect the public; write an associate's area small enough that patient access is not the problem a court has to fix.
• Layer a non-solicit and confidentiality terms. Restricting contact with patients and staff, and protecting the patient list itself, reaches conduct a non-compete does not.
• Price training separately. If the real concern is recovering the cost of specialized training, that is a different tool with its own legal limits — see our guide to training repayment agreements.
• Confirm licensure at hire. A covenant only matters if the person can practice — our guide to dentist licensure in New Jersey covers what the state requires.
• Have New Jersey employment counsel review the final language before it goes into an offer packet — the test is case law, and counsel is how you keep current with it.