Are Non-Competes Enforceable for Therapists and Behavioral Health Staff in Nevada?

Nevada answers this by statute, and the statute sorts your staff and your situations into clear groups.

• Salaried and licensed staff: conditionally. A Nevada non-compete is void unless it is supported by valuable consideration, imposes no greater restraint than the employer needs, imposes no undue hardship on the employee, and is appropriate in relation to the consideration.
• Hourly-paid staff: no. A non-compete may not apply to an employee paid solely on an hourly wage basis, exclusive of tips or gratuities — an hourly RBT, behavioral health technician or hourly-paid clinician cannot be bound by one.
• Clients who leave on their own: untouchable. The covenant cannot stop a former employee from serving a former client who was not solicited and voluntarily chose to leave and seek that person's services.
• Laid-off staff: only while you pay. After a reduction in force, reorganization or similar restructuring, the covenant holds only while the employer keeps paying salary, benefits or equivalent compensation, including severance.

Nevada's rule is written in statute: NRS 613.195, the section governing noncompetition covenants.

The Legislature added it in 2017 and amended it in 2021, and the official chapter page — revised September 9, 2026 — shows no later amendment.

The statute defines a non-compete as an agreement that, after employment ends, bars the employee from pursuing a similar vocation in competition with, or becoming employed by a competitor of, the employer.

That definition is what your therapists' and BCBAs' covenants get measured against.

The section also sits inside a larger design.

NRS 613.200(1) otherwise makes it a gross misdemeanor to willfully prevent a former employee from getting work elsewhere in Nevada; NRS 613.195 is the exception that lets a restrictive covenant survive, and only on its terms.

Read the two together: the covenant is the carve-out, not the default.

This page is Nevada only; the wider picture is in our guide to non-competes nationally.

None that name your licenses.

A check of Nevada law as of October 7, 2026 found no statute specifically restricting non-competes for counselors, social workers, marriage and family therapists, psychologists, behavior analysts, physicians or nurse practitioners — NRS 613.195 has no profession-specific provisions.

On that record, the same general rules govern the counselor you hire in Las Vegas, the psychiatrist adding medication management, and the BCBA running your early-intervention caseloads.

How other states' rules differ is its own topic — the national guide linked above covers it.

The rule that bites behavioral health hardest is profession-neutral: the hourly exclusion.

An RBT or behavioral health technician paid solely by the hour cannot be bound, and neither can an hourly-paid clinician.

Where it gets uncertain is pay structure: whether a clinician paid per session, or hourly plus a productivity bonus, counts as paid “solely on an hourly wage basis” was not resolved by this research — have Nevada employment counsel classify how each role is actually paid before you rely on the covenant.

Nevada's statute supplies the test itself, in four parts: a noncompetition covenant is void unless it is supported by valuable consideration, imposes no greater restraint than the employer needs, imposes no undue hardship on the employee, and is appropriate in relation to the consideration.

Time, area and scope of practice are the three dimensions the statute names when it directs courts to revise an overbroad covenant.

The statute also tells courts what to do with an overbroad clause: if a covenant is supported by consideration but unreasonable in time, geographic area or scope, the court shall revise it to the extent necessary and enforce it as revised.

Overreach does not automatically kill the covenant — the judge rewrites it and holds your clinician to the rewritten version.

This research surfaced no Nevada statutory maximum for duration or radius, and it did not cover Nevada case law either, so size both to a concrete interest you could show a judge — a specific program, a referral network, supervision you funded — and have counsel confirm how Nevada courts treat comparable terms.

Consideration is a statutory element, not a formality, so be ready to point to what the clinician received for signing — and keep the restraint proportionate to it, because a sweeping covenant stapled to a small inducement invites exactly the revision you do not want.

This is where Nevada is most protective of the therapy relationship.

Under NRS 613.195(2), a non-compete may not stop a former employee from serving a former client who was not solicited and voluntarily chose to leave and seek that person's services — and a clause that tries is void.

The client who calls your departing clinician on their own is free to follow.

The statute prices enforcement mistakes.

Under NRS 613.195(7), the court shall award the employee reasonable attorney's fees and costs in two situations: where the covenant was applied to an employee paid solely hourly, and where the employer tried to block service to unsolicited former clients.

A cease-and-desist letter telling a former clinician to stop seeing clients who found them on their own is aimed squarely at the conduct the second situation describes — whether any particular letter crosses the line is for a court.

Two boundaries on that protection: it belongs to clients who were not solicited and who left voluntarily, and it assumes the employee otherwise complies with the covenant — a clinician who actively solicits your caseload stands outside it.

The employee-side clause is a different instrument: this research covered the non-compete statute and the client-choice rule, and did not resolve how NRS 613.195 treats a standalone employee non-solicitation clause — have Nevada employment counsel review that language.

For drafting detail and the ethics-code duties behind these clauses, see our guide to non-solicitation clauses.

The statute tells you what it will and will not carry, so build the paperwork around that.

• Screen by pay structure first. Before any covenant goes out, confirm the role is not paid solely on an hourly wage basis — handing one to an hourly RBT or behavioral health technician is barred from the start, and trying to enforce it hands the employee their attorney's fees and costs.
• Use what Nevada expressly allows. Under NRS 613.200(4), an employer may use a reasonable, consideration-backed agreement barring a former employee from disclosing trade secrets, business methods, customer lists or confidential information learned during employment. It protects the client list and the confidential information itself — not the client’s choice to leave, which the client-choice rule already takes off the table.
• Draft inside the four requirements. Consideration behind it, no greater restraint than you need, no undue hardship, and a restraint proportionate to the consideration — a covenant that clears them on its face gives a court nothing to revise.
• Budget for the layoff rule. If you restructure, the covenant holds only while you keep paying salary, benefits or equivalent compensation including severance — decide per role whether paying through the restriction is worth it.
• Match the risk to the cheaper tool. Recouping supervision or training spend points to training repayment agreements instead; keeping clinicians at all points to clinician retention work that needs no enforcement.

Whatever the package, have Nevada employment counsel read the final wording before an offer goes out — especially on how your pay structures map to the hourly exclusion.