• On March 23, 2026, Washington Governor Bob Ferguson signed a bill into law that will ban noncompete agreements for employees and independent contractors.
• The law will declare all current employment-based and independent contractor-based “noncompetition agreements” to be void and unenforceable, and will prohibit employers from enforcing them.
• The law will prohibit entering into new employment-based and independent contractor-based noncompetition covenants.
• The ban will not apply to certain other restrictive covenants, including narrowly-drafted nonsolicitation agreements.
• The law takes effect on June 30, 2027, and it will require employers to notify employees, former employees, and independent contractors, in writing, by October 1, 2027, that any applicable noncompete agreements are no longer enforceable.

The signing of SHB 1155 comes two weeks after the Washington State Legislature passed the bill, and builds off the 2019 restrictions on noncompete agreements, which had limited their use to high-earning employees and even higher-earning independent contractors. Any “noncompetition covenant”—meaning any agreement “that prohibits or restrains an employee or independent contractor from engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind”—will be unlawful in Washington starting June 30, 2027. The definition of “noncompetition covenant” is to be liberally construed.

SHB 1155 will further require employers to “make reasonable efforts to provide written notice” by...

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