Are Physician Non-Competes Enforceable in Florida?

Physician non-competes are enforceable in Florida, and the state’s framework tilts strongly toward the practice trying to enforce them. Florida Statutes § 542.335 permits restrictive covenants that are reasonable in time, geographic area, and line of business, and it bars courts from reducing a restriction because of the personal or economic hardship enforcement would cause the doctor. A separate statute, § 542.336, voids non-competes in narrow circumstances where a single employer controls an entire specialty within a county.¹

What the Practice Has to Prove

Two threshold requirements exist before any Florida court will enforce a physician non-compete. First, the covenant must be in writing and signed by the physician. Verbal promises, unsigned handbooks, and informal understandings do not count. If the practice cannot produce a signed document, the covenant fails no matter how reasonable its terms are.¹

Second, the practice bears the initial burden of proving the restriction protects at least one “legitimate business interest” recognized by the statute. Five categories are listed:

Trade secrets as defined under Florida’s Uniform Trade Secrets Act.
Confidential business information that gives the practice a competitive edge, such as fee schedules, referral source lists, or payer contract terms.
Substantial relationships with specific existing or prospective patients. This is what practices invoke most often against departing physicians.
Patient goodwill tied to the practice’s trade name, geographic location, or marketing area.
Extraordinary or specialized training the practice funded or provided directly, beyond what the physician already knew. General medical knowledge and specialty skills do not qualify.

The statute uses the phrase “includes, but is not limited to,” so courts can recognize other interests case by case. Most physician disputes turn on patient relationships and goodwill. A practice that cannot show its patients have a meaningful, ongoing connection to the practice itself, rather than solely to the departing doctor, will struggle to justify the restriction.¹

How Long and How Wide Is Reasonable

Florida uses rebuttable presumptions on duration. For employees, agents, and independent contractors, a restriction of six months or less is presumed reasonable, and anything longer than two years is presumed unreasonable. For sellers of a practice or equity interest, the range shifts: three years or less is presumed reasonable, and longer than seven years is presumed unreasonable. Most physician employment non-competes land in the one-to-two-year range. Push past two years for a salaried physician and the practice has to produce evidence to overcome the presumption.¹

Geographic restrictions typically appear as a radius around each practice location, commonly five to twenty miles. Courts look at whether the restricted territory actually matches where the practice draws patients from. A ten-mile radius around a single suburban office is easier to defend than a county-wide ban. A restriction that blankets a whole metropolitan area or covers regions where the practice has no presence is vulnerable.

What Happens When a Practice Sues

The No-Hardship Rule

The provision that catches most physicians off guard: Florida law explicitly prohibits courts from considering the individualized economic or other hardship enforcement would cause the doctor. A judge cannot trim a restriction because you would lose income, uproot your family, or damage your career. That factor is off the table.¹

One counterweight exists. The statute requires courts to consider the effect of enforcement on public health, safety, and welfare. For physicians this matters more than for most other professionals. If a departing cardiologist is the only provider within a reasonable distance for a vulnerable population, a court must weigh that. This is often the strongest card a physician holds, but playing it takes real evidence: patient declarations, drive-time analyses, testimony about wait times for new patients in the area.¹

Injunctions Come Fast

When a practice sues to enforce, it almost always seeks a temporary injunction barring the physician from practicing in the restricted area while the case is pending. Florida law creates a presumption of irreparable injury when an enforceable covenant is violated. In most civil cases, proving irreparable harm is the hardest part of getting emergency relief. Here the statute hands it to the practice on a presumption, which is why injunctions in these disputes issue quickly.¹

The statute imposes one safeguard. No temporary injunction can issue unless the practice posts a bond to compensate the physician for lost income if the injunction later turns out to have been wrongful. Contract provisions that try to waive the bond or cap its amount are unenforceable. Bond amounts vary widely depending on the physician’s expected lost earnings during the restriction period, and fights over the bond figure can themselves become contentious.¹

Courts Rewrite Overbroad Covenants Instead of Voiding Them

If a court finds the terms too broad in duration, geographic scope, or business line, it does not throw out the agreement. Florida law requires the court to modify the restriction and grant only the relief reasonably necessary to protect the practice’s legitimate interest. This “blue pencil” power means practices have little incentive to draft narrow agreements in the first place. They can overreach in the contract knowing the worst likely outcome is a judge trimming the restriction, not voiding it.¹

The Specialty Monopoly Exception

Florida Statutes § 542.336 carves out a narrow but powerful exception. When a single entity, or a group of affiliated entities, employs or contracts with every physician who practices a particular medical specialty within a county, any non-compete signed by those physicians is void. The legislature found these monopoly-like arrangements restrict patient access and drive up costs, so the covenant is treated as having no legitimate business interest behind it.²

A 2019 amendment added a further protection. Even after a second employer enters the market and breaks the monopoly, non-competes remain void and unenforceable for three years following that second employer’s entry. Without that buffer, a hospital system could recruit a single outside physician to technically break the monopoly and then immediately begin enforcing non-competes against the specialists it already employed.

The bar for invoking the exception is high. If even one physician in the relevant specialty works for an unrelated employer within the county, the monopoly condition is not met. Proving it requires a careful count of every physician in that specialty within county lines, typically supported by workforce data, licensing records, and employment agreements. The statute references physicians licensed under chapters 458 and 459 but does not tie “specialty” to any particular certification board, so what counts as a medical specialty can itself become a fact fight.²

Buyouts and Liquidated Damages

Many physician contracts include a financial mechanism tied to the non-compete. A buyout clause lets the physician pay a specified amount to escape the restriction. Sometimes the price is a flat figure, sometimes a formula pegged to one year of the physician’s compensation. Formulas are simple but can overvalue the covenant early in a tenure and undervalue it later, when the physician has built significant patient relationships. More sophisticated contracts tie the buyout to a fair market value assessment done at the time of departure.

Liquidated damages work differently. Instead of buying freedom from the covenant, the physician pays for having breached it. Florida courts will enforce liquidated damages only if the amount is a reasonable estimate of the actual economic harm the practice would suffer, measured by lost net profits rather than lost revenue. When a figure is so high that it functions as a punishment rather than a compensation estimate, courts treat it as an unenforceable penalty. Provisions that stack multiple financial penalties, such as a percentage of fees generated plus a flat dollar amount plus forfeiture of deferred compensation, are especially vulnerable.

What to Negotiate Before You Sign

Florida’s framework leaves physicians with the most room to protect themselves in the contract itself, not in the courtroom later. A few provisions worth pushing on:

A termination-without-cause carve-out. Language specifying that the non-compete does not apply, or applies with reduced scope, if the practice fires you without cause. Florida’s statute does not mandate this, so it has to be bargained for. Without it, a physician terminated for no reason still faces the full restriction.
A buyout option with a defined formula. Securing the buyout in the original contract avoids having to negotiate one under the pressure of a departure. The formula should reflect the practice’s actual expected harm, not an arbitrary multiplier.
Geographic narrowing. Push for the restriction to apply only to the specific office locations where you actually practice, not every location the group operates. A twenty-mile radius around five offices in different parts of a metro area can effectively lock you out of an entire region.
Specialty limitation. If you practice more than one area of medicine, the covenant should restrict only the specialty you perform for this practice, not all medical work.
Duration tied to tenure. A six-month restriction after two years is very different from the same restriction after ten. Tying duration to actual tenure produces a more balanced outcome.

Practices expect physicians to negotiate. An employer that refuses to discuss any modifications is telling you how it will behave when you eventually leave.

The Federal Ban Is Not Coming

In April 2024, the Federal Trade Commission announced a rule that would have banned most non-competes nationwide, including those for physicians. The rule would have voided existing non-competes for all workers except senior executives, defined as those earning more than $151,164 annually in policy-making positions, and would have banned all new non-competes regardless of role.³

That rule never took effect. A federal district court in Texas found the FTC lacked authority to issue it and blocked enforcement. The FTC initially appealed, then in September 2025 voted 3-1 to dismiss the appeal and accept the court’s decision vacating the rule. Florida’s statutory framework remains fully in control of how physician non-competes are enforced.⁴

1
Online Sunshine. Florida Code 542.335 – Valid Restraints of Trade or Commerce
2
The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 542.336 – Invalid Restrictive Covenants
3
Federal Trade Commission. FTC Announces Rule Banning Noncompetes
4
Federal Trade Commission. Federal Trade Commission Files to Accede to Vacatur of Non-Compete Clause Rule