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

Rhode Island is a statute state, and its statute narrows who can be bound rather than banning non-competes.

The Noncompetition Agreement Act, on the books since 2019, says a noncompetition agreement cannot be enforced against four groups: employees classified as non-exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act, student interns, employees 18 or younger, and low-wage employees.

Employees outside those four groups keep the question alive, and that is where your associate dentist sits — though the low-wage group is defined by earnings rather than job title, so run the test below before assuming it never applies.

For a dental office, the first group does most of the work.

An hourly, overtime-eligible hygienist or assistant is an FLSA non-exempt employee, so a non-compete cannot be enforced against them in Rhode Island.

Federal classification rules line up behind that: a dental hygienist generally meets the learned-professional duties test only after four academic years of pre-professional and professional study in a CODA-accredited program, and the salary-basis test still applies — so a hygienist paid by the hour is non-exempt in practice.

An associate dentist sits differently.

Under the federal rules, a licensed dentist actually practicing is an exempt professional and the salary-level requirements do not apply, so the non-exempt bar does not reach a practicing associate.

The low-wage test is the remaining statutory gate: an employee whose average annual earnings — counting pay for the first 40 hours a week — are not more than 250% of the federal poverty level for individuals cannot be bound either.

Two links before the detail.

For how the rest of the country treats this question, see our guide to non-competes for dental staff nationally.

And if you are the associate rather than the practice, the worker's side of it is in dentist non-compete agreements.

The starting point is a statute: the Rhode Island Noncompetition Agreement Act, Rhode Island General Laws chapter 28-59.

Section 28-59-3 carries the enforcement bar for the four protected groups, and the definitions section, § 28-59-2, supplies the low-wage test: a low-wage employee's average annual earnings are not more than 250% of the federal poverty level for individuals under the HHS guidelines, counting pay for the first 40 hours a week.

The dollar figure behind that test moves every year with the HHS poverty guidelines, so pull the current-year guidelines before applying it — do not leave an old number in your contract template.

And the Act is still the general rule as far as this research found: in June 2024, according to a law-firm summary of the 2024 session, Rhode Island's governor vetoed SB 2436, which would have banned non-competes for employees generally.

That summary is not the legislature's own record, so treat it as context — and have Rhode Island employment counsel confirm where the statute stands before you rely on the point.

Rhode Island does single out healthcare licenses here — just not yours.

Section 5-37-33 of the Rhode Island General Laws voids restrictions on a physician's right to practice medicine, including the right to solicit or seek to establish a physician/patient relationship with the employer's current patients; it applies to physicians, not dentists.

Since June 17, 2024, § 5-34-50 has done the same for advanced practice registered nurses, voiding any restriction on an APRN's right to practice, including geographic non-competes and bans on treating or soliciting the employer's current patients.

Neither statute says dentist.

The state's dentistry and dental hygiene chapter, Rhode Island General Laws chapter 5-31.1, contains no restrictive-covenant or non-compete section — nothing alongside its licensing and scope provisions that mirrors the physician or APRN language.

So within that chapter's section list we found no statute that voids an associate dentist's covenant by profession — and none that approves one either.

Dental non-competes fall under the general Act.

The traps run in both directions.

Do not borrow a physician's analysis for an associate agreement — the § 5-37-33 protection does not transfer to a dental license.

And do not assume your hygienists get the APRN treatment either: that statute speaks of APRNs, not dental staff, so a hygienist's covenant is governed by the general Act's rules about who can be bound.

For the employees the Act protects, there is no time-and-area analysis to win or lose.

Section 28-59-3 says a noncompetition agreement cannot be enforced against them, so the number of months, the radius and the strength of your business interest never get weighed — the outcome comes from the statute.

For an associate dentist outside those groups, the picture is different, and it is the honest limit of this page.

Rhode Island's Act hands dentists no formula — nothing in its enforcement bar or its definitions caps a term, sets a mileage radius or prices a buyout — and how Rhode Island courts weigh duration, geography and scope for an associate covenant under general common law was outside this research.

Do not treat that silence as approval: a specific covenant — its years, its miles, its scope — stands or falls on its own facts, and that is a question for Rhode Island employment counsel before the agreement is signed, not after.

Two statutory rules apply either way.

Under § 28-59-3(b), an unenforceable non-compete does not void the remainder of the contract, so the rest of your agreement survives.

And a court can still impose a non-competition restriction as a remedy for breach of another agreement or duty — a void non-compete clause is not a license to breach everything around it.

This is where a Rhode Island practice's real leverage sits.

The Act's definition of a noncompetition agreement does not reach covenants not to solicit or hire employees, covenants not to solicit or transact business with customers, clients or vendors, or nondisclosure agreements.

Those clauses stay available to you — for hygienists and assistants as much as for associates — because the Act's rules about who can be bound only govern noncompetition agreements.

One drafting question to flag with counsel: the statute's words are “customers, clients, or vendors,” and patients are not named.

Whether a patient non-solicit fits inside that exclusion is a reading of the statutory text rather than something this page can settle, so put it to Rhode Island employment counsel when the clause is drafted.

Confidentiality terms can do real work behind them.

Under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, business information — including compilations such as 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.

Even then, a federal trade-secret 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.

Our guide to patient and staff non-solicits covers how these clauses are built and where they meet your duties to patients.

Draft around what the statute leaves you, and spend the enforcement energy on the clauses that survive:

• Sort your staff by classification first. Hourly, overtime-eligible hygienists and assistants cannot be bound by a Rhode Island non-compete, so a covenant in their packet is dead weight — build the non-solicit and confidentiality terms instead.
• Put the surviving clauses in every agreement. Staff non-solicits and nondisclosure terms sit outside the Act outright, and patient non-solicits are the drafting question flagged above. They aim at what a practice actually loses when someone leaves: the recall base and the team.
• Keep the associate covenant narrow and counsel-reviewed. With no dentist-specific statute found and no formula in the Act to draft to, an associate's non-compete is a common-law question — have counsel size the time and area before anything is signed.
• Use money deliberately. If the worry is a signing bonus or a course that walks out the door, a training repayment agreement is a different tool with its own rules — see our guide to training repayment agreements.
• Write the rest of the contract to stand alone. Section 28-59-3(b) keeps the agreement alive when the non-compete is unenforceable, so the notice, records and compensation terms should work without it.
• Verify the license at hire. A covenant is not the only gate between a recruit and their first day — our guide to dentist licensure in Rhode Island covers what the state requires.