DC Non-Compete Law: Thresholds, Valid Terms, and Penalties

Under the District of Columbia’s non-compete law, most workers cannot be bound by a non-compete agreement at all. The Ban on Non-Compete Agreements Amendment Act of 2020, in effect since October 1, 2022, only permits non-competes for employees earning at least $162,164 a year in 2026, or $270,274 for medical specialists, and even those agreements are void unless they meet strict rules on scope, length, and written notice. Everyone else in D.C. is free to quit and go work for a competitor, no matter what their contract says.

Who Counts as a D.C. Employee Under the Ban

The law protects “covered employees.” You qualify if you spend more than half of your work time in the District, or if you’re based in D.C. and don’t spend more than half your time in any other single jurisdiction.¹ Prospective hires are covered too: if your employer reasonably expects you’ll meet the geographic test, the protection attaches before your first day.

That sweeps in hybrid staff, remote employees based in D.C., and anyone whose office is in the District. Unless you’re above the income thresholds below, your employer cannot make you sign a non-compete as a condition of getting or keeping the job, and any non-compete you already signed is void.²

The 2026 Income Thresholds

Only “highly compensated employees” can lawfully be asked to sign a non-compete. For 2026, that means annual compensation of at least $162,164 for most workers, or $270,274 for medical specialists. Those figures started at $150,000 and $250,000 when the law took effect and rise each January with the Consumer Price Index for the Washington metropolitan area.³ The compensation calculation includes base salary plus bonuses, commissions, and other incentive pay.

A “medical specialist” under the law is specifically a licensed physician who has completed a residency and works primarily in delivering medical services.³ Nurses, therapists, and healthcare administrators don’t fall in that category no matter what they earn; they’re evaluated against the standard threshold.

If your pay is below the applicable number at the moment the non-compete is proposed, the agreement can’t be enforced. The employer has to verify the dollar figure before putting the paperwork in front of you.

What a Valid Non-Compete Must Contain

Clearing the income bar isn’t enough on its own. For a highly compensated employee, a non-compete is still void unless the written agreement does all of the following:

Identifies the specific services, roles, industries, or competing companies you can’t work for.
Defines the geographic area of the restriction. A blanket “anywhere” clause won’t hold.
Caps the restriction at no more than 365 days after separation for most employees, or 730 days for medical specialists.⁴
Reaches you at least 14 days before your start date, or, for existing employees, at least 14 days before the agreement takes effect.⁴
Includes the prescribed disclosure telling you that D.C. law limits non-competes, that your employer has determined you qualify as highly compensated, and that you can contact the Department of Employment Services for more information.⁵

Miss any one of these and the whole agreement is unenforceable, regardless of what you signed. Employers often draft a non-compete that reads reasonably but leaves out the required disclosure language or runs past the duration cap; that’s a common way for the agreement to collapse.

What Employers Can Still Make You Sign

The ban targets non-competes. It doesn’t touch several other restrictive agreements, and those remain valid for every worker regardless of pay:

Confidentiality and non-disclosure clauses covering trade secrets and proprietary information.
Conflict-of-interest rules that bar outside work creating a genuine conflict, risking disclosure of confidential information, or violating professional ethics.
Long-term incentive terms that condition pay on continued employment, such as stock vesting schedules or deferred bonuses.³

Expect employers to lean harder on these tools now. A confidentiality clause drafted so broadly that it effectively blocks you from working for any competitor can be challenged as a disguised non-compete, but ordinary NDAs and non-solicitation terms are generally lawful under D.C. law.

Workers Who Fall Outside the Law

A few categories aren’t treated as employees under the Act, so the ban doesn’t reach them: unpaid volunteers at educational, charitable, religious, or nonprofit organizations,⁶ lay members holding elected or appointed positions within a religious organization, and casual babysitters in private homes.³

Broadcast employees are a different story that often gets read backwards. Anchors, reporters, producers, writers, and other creators at TV stations, radio networks, and cable outlets are explicitly excluded from the definition of “highly compensated employee.”³ Because they can never qualify as highly compensated, they can never be bound by a non-compete under the Act. A D.C. news anchor earning $500,000 is still fully protected by the ban.

If You Push Back, You’re Protected

The law does more than void illegal agreements; it shields workers who resist them. Your employer cannot retaliate, or threaten to retaliate, if you refuse to sign a prohibited non-compete, decline to comply with one you believe is illegal, ask questions or raise complaints about a non-compete with a coworker, lawyer, or government agency, or request the written disclosures the law requires.² Retaliation carries its own penalties on top of what the employer owes for the underlying non-compete violation.

What Violations Cost, and How You Enforce Them

If your employer required an illegal non-compete or tries to enforce a void one, D.C. law sets minimum amounts owed to you personally:

Requiring a prohibited non-compete: $500 to $1,000 per affected employee for a first violation, and at least $3,000 per employee for later violations.
Trying to enforce a void non-compete: at least $1,500 per employee for a first violation, and at least $3,000 per employee after that.
Retaliation: $1,000 to $2,500 per employee, per act of retaliation.⁷

The Mayor can also impose administrative fines running from $250 to $1,000 per violation, with a $1,000 minimum for retaliation.⁷ Those are separate from what the employer owes you.

You have two enforcement paths. You can file an administrative complaint with the Mayor, or you can sue directly in court. In a civil suit, you prove your case by a preponderance of the evidence.⁷ The statute doesn’t set its own deadline, so D.C.’s general rules for civil actions supply the limitations period.

Why D.C. Law, Not the FTC Rule, Controls

In April 2024, the Federal Trade Commission issued a rule that would have banned most non-competes nationwide.⁸ A federal court in Texas struck it down in Ryan LLC v. FTC, finding the FTC had exceeded its authority and that the rule was unreasonably broad, and the ruling applied nationwide.

With the federal rule gone, the D.C. statute is the whole ballgame for workers in the District. If your employer ignores its requirements, D.C. law is what you rely on.

1
D.C. Law Library. D.C. Code 32-581.01 – Definitions
2
D.C. Law Library. D.C. Code 32-581.02 – Prohibition on Non-Compete Provisions for Covered Employees
3
D.C. Law Library. D.C. Law 24-175 – Non-Compete Clarification Amendment Act of 2022
4
Department of Employment Services. District of Columbia Prohibition on Non-Compete Clauses
5
D.C. Law Library. D.C. Code 32-581.03a – Disclosures to Employees
6
D.C. Law Library. D.C. Law 23-209 – Ban on Non-Compete Agreements Amendment Act of 2020
7
D.C. Law Library. D.C. Code 32-581.04 – Relief and Penalties
8
Federal Trade Commission. FTC Announces Rule Banning Noncompetes