Related links:
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Ryan LLC v. FTC granted summary judgment “setting aside” the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) Final Rule banning non-compete clauses between employers and workers on Aug. 20, 2024. The outcomes of two other cases challenging the Final Rule are unlikely to impact the status. The FTC appealed the district court’s injunction in Properties of the Villages, Inc. v. FTC to the Eleventh Circuit, which likely will affirm the lower court. The plaintiff in ATS Tree Service v. FTC voluntarily dismissed the case after unsuccessfully attempting to stay the litigation after the Ryan decision. Despite these cases, however, the FTC’s authority to identify anti-competitive activity and pursue enforcement mechanisms case-by-case remains unchallenged and intact.
The language of the now-set-aside Final Rule provides a key to understanding how the FTC will approach case-by-case enforcement. The FTC considers non-compete agreements between employers and employees to be unfair methods of competition and therefore violations of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA), which bans “unfair methods of competition” and “unfair or deceptive acts or practices.” The FTC’s review and enforcement likely will mirror its enforcement processes in cases of monopolization or...
Topline Alexander Smirnov, the former FBI informant who was accused earlier this year of making false statements about President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, was indicted Tuesday on unrelate...