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

North Dakota is a ban state.

Under section 9-08-06 of the North Dakota Century Code, a contract by which anyone is restrained from exercising "a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind" is void "to that extent" — and the exceptions the statute then lists are about ownership, not jobs.

So a clause stopping an associate dentist, a hygienist, an assistant or a front-desk employee from going to work for the practice across town does not survive the statute.

A person selling the goodwill of a business, along with that seller's partners, members or shareholders, can covenant with the buyer, and owners can be bound on a dissolution, dissociation or sale of an ownership interest.

There is no exception for ordinary employees: a practice sale or an owner buy-out can carry a covenant — an employment agreement cannot.

There is no federal rescue either: the Federal Trade Commission's non-compete rule never took effect — a federal court set it aside in 2024 — and the agency removed it from the Code of Federal Regulations on February 12, 2026, so state law decides what your practice can enforce.

Where North Dakota sits among the other approaches — outright bans, dentist-specific statutes, income thresholds — is covered in our guide to non-competes for dental staff nationally.

The rule is statutory.

Section 9-08-06 opens with a blanket proposition — a contract restraining anyone from a lawful profession, trade or business of any kind is void to that extent — and then writes its own exceptions into the statute itself.

That structure matters: there is no judge-made balancing test an employment covenant can be argued through, the way there is in states that enforce non-competes within reasonableness limits.

The statute either fits an exception or it is void.

The case law matters for how far the voiding language reaches.

In Warner & Co. v. Solberg, 2001 ND 156, the North Dakota Supreme Court applied section 9-08-06 to contract provisions restricting a former employee's contact with the employer's customers and held them void — the statute, the court said, contains no exception for them.

That reading is why North Dakota's ban reaches beyond a classic non-compete, and it is the case a dental practice should know by name.

We take its holding apart in the non-solicit section below.

Section 9-08-06 has no dentist-specific carve-out.

It covers "a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind," and no separate North Dakota health-care non-compete statute surfaced in our research — the same ban governs an associate dentist's employment agreement, a hygienist's, a dental assistant's and a front-office employee's alike.

There is also no earnings threshold that switches the rule off.

In states that use income levels to decide who can be bound, pay changes the answer; in North Dakota it never does.

The only routes past the ban are the ownership-based exceptions described above.

For a multi-state owner the practical point is that North Dakota's blanket rule is not portable: states answer this question differently, so the agreement each hire signs should be drafted for that hire's state rather than copied from a group template.

In states that enforce non-competes, the fight is over the length of the restricted period, the size of the restricted area and whether the employer has a legitimate business interest worth protecting.

North Dakota's statute skips that fight for employees: a non-compete in an employment agreement is void under section 9-08-06 whatever its dimensions, because there is no employee exception for a court to measure the clause against.

Reasonableness does real work in the exception the statute writes for a seller of goodwill.

That covenant is valid only "within a reasonable geographic area" and "for a reasonable length of time," and the statute leaves those words undefined, so the facts of the sale decide them.

If you are buying a practice, this is the covenant you can actually insist on: keep the area to where the practice truly draws patients and the term no longer than the transition needs.

And when a court finds a restraint?

It cuts the clause, not the contract.

Because section 9-08-06 voids a restraint only "to that extent," North Dakota courts can strike an unreasonable restraining clause and keep the rest of the agreement — the Supreme Court has quoted the rule that a severable unreasonable clause may be separated, "leaving a reasonable agreement."

The remedy is subtraction: the void restraint comes out, and what remains — pay, duties, notice, confidentiality — stands.

A court will not redraft the restraint into a narrower non-compete that binds.

Patient non-solicits are the risky middle ground.

In Warner, the North Dakota Supreme Court held void under section 9-08-06 clauses that barred a former employee from trying to move the employer's existing customers' business and from writing business for clients who came to her on their own — a customer no-solicit and a no-service clause, both struck.

Warner was an insurance-agency dispute about customers, and no North Dakota dentist covenant case surfaced in our research, so applying it to patients is an inference — but it is the state's governing reading of customer-restriction clauses, and a clause barring a departing employee from contacting former patients lands in that territory.

Treat patient non-solicits and no-service terms as risky, and plan on their not holding up, until employment counsel says otherwise.

Two other points from Warner matter to a dental practice.

A narrowly drawn clause penalizing a former employee for soliciting co-workers to leave was held not void as a restraint of trade — a staff non-solicit, on point for keeping a departing assistant or hygienist from recruiting your team away, though the court's approval turned on how tight the clause was.

And the court noted the Legislature had been asked several times to let employers bar former employees from soliciting clients and had not done so — the void rule is deliberate policy, so do not count on it being legislated away.

Confidentiality is the sturdier protection.

North Dakota has adopted the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (N.D.C.C. ch. 47-25.1), so real trade secrets and confidential information stay protectable even though the non-compete is gone.

How these clauses are structured, and where other states draw the line, is covered in our guide to patient and staff non-solicits.

The protection you can actually enforce in North Dakota is mostly built outside a non-compete clause:

• Save the covenant for ownership moments. The non-compete that holds is the one signed when someone sells the practice's goodwill or exits an ownership stake, kept to a reasonable area and a reasonable time. If a sale, partnership or buy-out is on your horizon, that is where this tool belongs.
• Keep any staff non-solicit narrow. The clause Warner approved penalized soliciting co-workers to leave and nothing more. Model that: name the conduct, keep it tight, and leave patient-facing restrictions out unless counsel signs off.
• Protect information instead of territory. Confidentiality terms in writing at hire, plus real secrecy measures — individual logins, no bulk exports of the schedule or patient data, credentials changed the day someone leaves. Under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, 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 — and where the secret relates to a product or service used in interstate commerce, the owner of a misappropriated trade secret can bring a civil action in federal court. Even then, a DTSA injunction cannot simply bar someone from taking a new job: conditions on new employment must rest on evidence of threatened misappropriation, not merely on what the person knows.
• Use ordinary contract terms for the transition. A notice period, a plan for handing off active treatment and an orderly records process protect continuity of care without telling anyone where they may work next.
• Be careful with repayment clauses. Some practices reach for training repayment agreements when a newly trained hire leaves early. That is a different lever with its own state-by-state limits — do not assume one is enforceable in North Dakota without legal review.

When you are hiring rather than restricting, the credential comes first — dentist licensure in North Dakota covers what an associate needs before day one.

And if you want the other side of the table, our guide to dentist non-compete agreements covers the worker's view nationally.