BY CLINT COMBS
Minnesota is not just a beacon of civil liberties, it’s also a national testing ground for economic liberty policies. If you can’t choose where to use your skills and talents, then you’re not really free. If you can’t switch jobs without being penalized, then you’re not really free.
Non-compete agreements are contractual provisions that lock workers into their jobs, preventing them from working for competitors or starting new businesses.
House File 1768 was a line item in the budget bill that passed the House but later died in the Senate. The legislation would have created carve-outs to Minnesota’s non-compete ban, allowing employers to enforce non-competes on:
– Workers earning over $200,000 whose work involves creating, monitoring, or changing secret company information
– Workers earning over $120,000 who handle secret company information
– All workers making more than $500,000 per year
Rep. Dave Baker, R-Willmar, supports these exemptions, likely influenced by lobbyists who argue that non-compete agreements make the state more competitive for business.
The real-world impact is stark. Unless medical workers are willing to relocate to Minneapolis/St. Paul, suburbs like Bloomington, or accept massive salary cuts to restart their careers, non-competes trap them in their current positions. That’s a violation of individual liberty.
“If we don’t fix this, these other companies are going to slip away,” Baker told the MN Reformer, referring to the contracts required by medical technology giant Medtronic.
Dr. Amina Adil, a cardiologist at Essentia Health-St. Mary’s Medical Center in Duluth, exemplifies this problem. She’s barred from working at Aspirus St. Luke’s, the only other major hospital in the area.
“Even those physicians who may not want to move from this community are forced to move from the city if they decide to quit their jobs at either of these hospitals,” Dr. Adil said.
The carve-out clauses in H.F. 1768 that excluded nonprofits from the non-compete ban particularly enraged Dr. Adil. “Almost all large hospital systems are nonprofit hospitals where their CEOs and other hospital administrators make million-dollar salaries, excluding bonuses,” she said.
This Minnesota debate reflects a broader national struggle over worker mobility. Former FTC Chair Lina Khan championed alternatives to non-competes: “There are alternative rules to non-competes that you can use to protect legitimate trade secrets, legitimate IP [intellectual property]. So you can use non-disclosures that can be tailored,” Khan told CNBC.
Khan’s FTC banned non-competes nationwide in April 2024, arguing they “keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism.” However, federal courts blocked the ban, and under Trump’s new FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, the agency halted its appeals defending the rule, effectively killing the nationwide non-compete ban.
This federal setback makes state-level action more crucial. Hannah Garden-Monheit, Senior Fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project, oversaw non-compete cases under Chair Khan. In testimony to state lawmakers, she argued that state-level non-compete legislation is now more important than ever.
“The FTC adopted a categorical non-compete ban, but it is not in effect due to ongoing litigation by big corporate interest groups,” Garden-Monheit told lawmakers. “That makes it all the more important that Minnesota not cut back on the important protections that Governor Walz signed into law in 2023.”
On a shelf in Garden-Monheit’s office, two pink eggs sit next to a coffee cup that reads “Wu & Kanter & Khan.” The three names celebrate the architects of Biden’s antitrust revolution—Wu wrote the policy blueprint (Executive Order 14036), Khan enforced it at the FTC (successfully blocking the merger between grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons and banning non-compete agreements nationwide), and Kanter executed it at DOJ (winning historic monopoly cases against Google, LiveNation, and RealPage). Together, they transformed American competition policy from decades of corporate-friendly enforcement into the most aggressive trust-busting campaign in over a century.
The trio’s impact resonated with progressive lawmakers. Sen. Bernie Sanders told voters at a rally for Rep. Ilhan Omar last summer, “One of the best appointees that the Biden/Harris administration made was Lina Khan as FTC Chair. Lina has done more to take on concentrated wealth than any FTC Chair in decades.”
The crowd roared. Yet when Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden on the presidential ticket, LinkedIn co-founder and billionaire Democratic mega-donor Reid Hoffman lobbied Harris to fire Chair Khan.
Sanders pushed back: “Some people on Wall Street are saying to Kamala, ‘if you get elected president, get rid of Lina Khan.’ We say no—give her all the power she needs.”
Even local officials caught the antitrust fever. Council Member Aurin Chowdhury tweeted, “Forever crying over the fact that Lina Khan isn’t the FTC commissioner anymore. Counting the days until she’s back.”
