The Colorado Legislature recently approved significant changes to the state's noncompetition and restrictive covenants statute. The Restrictive Employments Agreement Act ("Act") (HB 22-1317) is a major overhaul of C.R.S. § 8-2-113, in which Colorado's restrictive covenants restrictions are enshrined.
To be sure, restrictive covenants are still void in Colorado, unless they fall within certain statutory exceptions. These statutory exceptions have been substantially changed or removed altogether by the Act. Among others, the Act has also inserted notice requirements to the statute, violations of which result in a void restrictive covenant, and enforcement and remedies provisions, including statutory penalties, available to both aggrieved workers and prospective workers.
Below is a summary of the most important changes that all Colorado employers and employees should know.
As an initial matter, the Colorado Legislature has removed the management and executive personnel exception for non-compete agreements and augmented the trade secrets exception with an additional compensation requirement. Under the new rubric, a non-compete agreement is permissible with a worker or prospective worker who, at the time the non-compete is entered into and at the time it is enforced, earns an amount of annualized cash compensation equivalent to or greater than the threshold amount for highly compensated workers (which is determined by the Colorado...
Civil society, for Locke, begins with a surrender. In the state of nature, anyone may punish a wrong done to the community. In society, that power passes to a common authority, and only the sovere...