Chicago - Attorney General Kwame Raoul, as part of a coalition of 18 attorneys general, filed an amicus brief supporting a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rule prohibiting noncompete clauses – provisions that restrict employees’ ability to work for or start competing businesses after leaving their current jobs – in employment contracts nationwide.
In April 2024, the FTC issued the final Noncompete Clause Rule, which bars employers from including noncompete clauses in new employment contracts and renders most existing noncompete clauses unenforceable. In publishing the rule, the FTC explained that noncompete clauses depress worker wages, create legal hurdles for employees looking to grow their careers and undermine economic innovation and growth by trapping individuals in their jobs.
“Noncompete clauses unfairly prevent millions of workers from getting higher-paying jobs that allow them to better provide for themselves and their families. They also prevent workers from leaving hostile or unsafe work environments,” Raoul said. “That is why I support the FTC’s efforts to remove these career obstacles for workers in Illinois and across the nation.”
Business and interest groups opposed to the rule immediately challenged it in court. In one such case, Properties of the Villages Inc., v. FTC, a federal district court in Florida issued a limited preliminary injunction barring the FTC from enforcing the rule against the plaintiff corporation. Raoul and the coalition’s amicus brief supports the FTC’s appeal of that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and the reversal of the preliminary injunction.
The amicus brief builds on Attorney General Raoul’s efforts to fight unlawful employment practices. In 2023, while the FTC was developing the noncompete rule, Raoul joined other attorneys general who submitted a comment letter in support of the proposed regulation. In that letter, the attorneys general argued that low- and middle-wage workers would benefit the most from the proposed rule, having a high potential for increases in wages and job mobility.
After becoming Attorney General, Raoul initiated legislation to formally establish a Worker Protection Unit within the Attorney General’s office. In 2024, Raoul and six other attorneys general reached a settlement with Valvoline that ended the company’s use of noncompete clauses with hourly employees. And in 2019, Raoul and a coalition of 13 attorneys general secured a settlement requiring four fast-food chains to stop using no-poach agreements, which prevented employees from leaving one fast-food franchise to work for another franchise in the same chain. Those settlements enabled low-wage workers to pursue better paying jobs and benefited consumers, employees and employers by protecting competition in the labor market.
Raoul is also responsible for enforcing the Illinois Freedom to Work Act, which prohibits employers from including noncompete clauses in contracts with certain employees, including those earning $75,000 per year or less, and limits the enforceability of other noncompete clauses.
Raoul was joined in filing this latest brief by the attorneys general of California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
