What the Florida CHOICE Act actually changes about non-competes
Florida already had the most employer-friendly non-compete regime in the country. The CHOICE Act, in effect since July 2025, tilts the field further. Here is what is genuinely new.
Florida already had the most employer-friendly non-compete statute in the country. The Florida Contracts Honoring Opportunity, Investment, Confidentiality, and Economic Growth Act, in effect since July 1, 2025 and known as the CHOICE Act, layers a second regime on top of the existing one. The old statute remains. The CHOICE Act is opt-in for employers who want stronger enforcement and are willing to meet the procedural requirements that come with it.
What is genuinely new is worth understanding clearly, because the political framing of “Florida just supercharged its non-competes” overstates what happened for most employees and understates what happened for a specific class of them.
The CHOICE Act applies only to higher-compensated employees. Coverage requires a base salary (excluding commissions and bonuses) of at least twice the average annual mean wage for the relevant Florida county, or the employee’s home county if the employer’s headquarters is out of state. In practical numbers, that is roughly $120,000 to $145,000 depending on geography. Below that threshold, you are still in Florida’s existing restrictive covenant statute, which is itself favorable to employers but does not include the CHOICE Act’s enhancements.
For the employees who do meet the threshold, four things change.
First, Florida courts must issue injunctions to enforce qualifying agreements. The discretionary balancing that historically gave departing employees room to argue irreparable harm is replaced by something close to a mandatory remedy.
Second, the burden of proof flips. Under the existing statute, the employer carries the burden of proving the agreement is reasonable and the breach occurred. Under the CHOICE Act, the employee or the new employer has to prove that no violation occurred or that the agreement cannot be enforced.
Third, the standard of proof flips with the burden. Employees challenging a CHOICE Act agreement face “clear and convincing evidence,” which is substantially harder than the “preponderance of the evidence” standard that governs most civil litigation.
Fourth, the maximum enforcement period doubles from two years to four years. That is the change that has the most practical consequence for senior people in industries where competitive intelligence has a long shelf life.
The procedural requirements are the part employers most often get wrong. To qualify for CHOICE Act protections, the agreement has to come with three things: written notice instructing the employee to consult counsel, at least seven days of advance notice before the agreement takes effect, and adequate consideration. Consideration can be initial employment, continued employment, a promotion, or other valuable benefits, but it has to be identified. Skipping any of these procedural steps can render the agreement unenforceable under the CHOICE Act even though it would have been enforceable under the older statute. Employers who treat the procedural requirements as boilerplate end up worse off than if they had simply used the old framework.
For technology companies specifically, the CHOICE Act cuts two ways. When you are recruiting senior engineers or executives from established competitors, you need to check whether they are subject to CHOICE Act agreements, because the cost of litigation and the four-year enforcement window changes the calculus on signing them. When you are protecting your own founding team’s institutional knowledge, the CHOICE Act gives you a stronger tool than you had a year ago, provided you do the procedural work up front.
The practical takeaway is to map your workforce against the salary threshold and decide deliberately who you want under a CHOICE Act agreement and who stays under the existing statute. The answer is not “everyone above $120,000.” The answer depends on what the person actually has access to that would damage the business if they walked out the door with it. For senior leaders, key engineering hires, and client-facing executives with portable books of business, the CHOICE Act is a meaningful upgrade. For most other employees, it is overkill that creates procedural risk without proportionate benefit.
Florida is not making non-competes universal. It is making them more enforceable for a narrower set of people. The employers who get the most out of the change are the ones who treat the eligibility analysis as a real exercise, not a default.