Massachusetts Top Court Limits Scope of Noncompete Restrictions

June 13, 2025, 2:56 PM UTC

Non-solicitation agreements—and similar pacts with penalties for breaching employees—aren’t covered under Massachusetts’ noncompetition law, the state Supreme Judicial Court clarified in a ruling Friday.

In a decision narrowing the power of the state’s limit on anticompetitive employment agreements, Justice Serge Georges, Jr. said that workers couldn’t scrap agreements with their past employers just because they come with liquidated damages provisions.

“Although the agreement here involves a non-solicitation provision coupled with a forfeiture clause, the inclusion of the latter does not alter this analysis,” Georges wrote for the unanimous court. There is “no justification for treating a nonsolicitation covenant differently simply ...

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