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

Yes — within limits.

Under Business & Commerce Code § 15.50(a), a covenant not to compete is enforceable if it is ancillary to or part of an otherwise enforceable agreement and its limits on time, geographical area and scope of activity are reasonable and no broader than needed to protect goodwill or another business interest.

On top of that general test, Senate Bill 1318 built a dentist-specific gate: for a covenant entered into or renewed on or after September 1, 2025, one relating to the practice of dentistry is unenforceable against a Texas-licensed dentist unless it provides a buyout of no more than the dentist's total annual salary and wages at termination, expires within one year, covers no more than a five-mile radius, and states its terms clearly and conspicuously in writing.

Dental hygienists and assistants are not named in that section, so their covenants appear to face only the general reasonableness test.

This is the employer's view for Texas; an associate handed a covenant can read the worker's side in our guide to dentist non-compete agreements.

Because these rules depend on the state, the country-wide picture lives in our guide to non-competes for dental staff nationally.

Both rules are statutes, not case law.

The general test lives in Texas Business & Commerce Code § 15.50(a); the mechanics — who proves what, and what a court does with an overbroad draft — live in § 15.51.

Senate Bill 1318 (2025) added § 15.501, the dentist-specific section, effective September 1, 2025.

Chapter 15 also crowds out everything else: under § 15.52, the provisions of §§ 15.50, 15.501 and 15.51 are exclusive as to non-compete enforceability and remedies and preempt other law, including common law.

The federal layer is quiet.

The FTC's 2024 non-compete 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.

Section 15.501 defines “health care practitioner” to include a person licensed by the State Board of Dental Examiners to practice dentistry in Texas — along with nurses licensed under Occupations Code chapter 301 and licensed physician assistants.

How that license is earned is its own subject: see our guide to dentist licensure in Texas.

For a covered dentist, a covenant relating to the practice of dentistry must clear all four of these, or it is unenforceable:

SB 1318 limits dentist non-competes; it does not ban them — miss any one of the four and the covenant is unenforceable under the dentist rule.

Timing matters too: the law applies only to covenants entered into or renewed on or after September 1, 2025, so an associate agreement signed earlier stays under prior law unless it is renewed.

Texas also drew a sharper line for physicians than for dentists: since September 1, 2025 a physician non-compete is void if the physician is involuntarily discharged without good cause, while § 15.501 has no equivalent discharge rule for dentists.

Everyone else: § 15.501 names people licensed to practice dentistry — not dental hygienists or dental assistants — so their non-competes appear to fall under the general § 15.50(a) test, without the buyout, one-year or five-mile limits.

That reading is untested, so have counsel confirm it before you rely on it.

For covenants that are not dentist covenants — hygienists, assistants, front-office staff — § 15.50(a) appears to be the whole test: limits on time, geographical area and scope of activity that are reasonable and no broader than needed to protect goodwill or another business interest, attached to an otherwise enforceable agreement.

The burden of proof sits with the practice.

When the primary purpose of the agreement is personal services — which is what an employment contract is — the employer has the burden of establishing that the covenant meets the statute's criteria.

An overbroad draft is not automatically dead: the court must reform the covenant to reasonable limits and enforce it as reformed.

The catch is the remedy.

An employer who ends up with a reformed covenant gets injunctive relief and no damages for breaches before the reformation — and if the employer knew the covenant was unreasonable and tried to enforce it too broadly, the court may award the employee attorney's fees.

Overbreadth in Texas is survivable, but it costs you the damages and can cost you fees.

This page's research covers Texas non-competes; it does not establish how Texas courts treat non-solicitation clauses, so treat a non-solicit as its own instrument with its own review.

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

Confidentiality has a federal backstop.

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, including compilations such as 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.

The same law limits the injunction: a DTSA injunction may not prevent a person from entering into an employment relationship, and conditions on the new job must rest on evidence of threatened misappropriation — not merely on what the person knows.

Texas leaves a practice plenty it can still protect — if you draft to the rules the statute sets:

• Write dentist covenants inside the four guardrails from the start. A buyout within the salary-and-wages cap, a one-year term, a five-mile radius, clear and conspicuous written terms. An overreaching draft is enforceable only as rewritten, without damages — and one that misses a guardrail is unenforceable under the dentist rule.
• Fix record ownership in the associate agreement. Under Texas Board rule 22 TAC 108.8, dental records are the sole property of the dentist who performs the service, but ownership of original records may be transferred — Texas allows a transfer-of-records agreement at any time during employment, covering future records, so the agreement can assign record ownership to the practice. A dentist who leaves must keep the records, transfer them in writing, or sign a records-maintenance agreement, and notify the State Board of Dental Examiners in writing within 15 days of a transfer or maintenance agreement.
• Use training repayment agreements for the costs a covenant cannot reach — and structure them with Texas Labor Code 61.018 in mind: it bars withholding or diverting an employee's wages unless a court orders it, the law authorizes it, or the employee authorizes it in writing for a lawful purpose.
• Layer non-solicits and real secrecy measures. The trade-secret definition does the work only if access to the patient list is controlled and the compilation is genuinely not generally known.
• Have Texas employment counsel review the final language before it goes into an offer packet.