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

Yes — Texas enforces non-competes against therapists, counselors, BCBAs and other behavioral health employees under its non-compete statute, Texas Business and Commerce Code chapter 15.

For licensed professional counselors, clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists, psychologists and behavior analysts, the general reasonableness test in § 15.50(a) is the only test — neither Texas healthcare rule covers those licenses.

Two date points matter.

The state's stricter healthcare-specific limits reach physicians — psychiatrists included — and, for covenants entered into or renewed on or after September 1, 2025, nurses, APRNs, physician assistants and dentists.

And there is no federal ban to fall back on: a federal district court set the 2024 federal non-compete rule aside in August 2024, and the FTC removed it from the Code of Federal Regulations on February 12, 2026 — so Texas law decides.

Our guide to non-competes nationally covers the federal retreat and the states that restrict behavioral health covenants by profession.

Statute.

Under Texas Business and Commerce Code § 15.50(a), a covenant not to compete is enforceable if it is ancillary to or part of an otherwise enforceable agreement at the time the agreement is made, and its limits on time, geographic area and scope of activity are reasonable and no greater than needed to protect the employer's goodwill or other business interest.

Chapter 15 is also the complete framework: under § 15.52, Texas's §§ 15.50, 15.501 and 15.51 are the exclusive rules for non-compete enforceability and remedies and preempt other law, including common law.

Your covenant lives or dies by this chapter.

Two drafting habits follow from the text.

Put the covenant inside the written employment agreement, so it is plainly part of an otherwise enforceable agreement on the day it is signed.

And know which business interest you are protecting — the statute names goodwill or other business interests — because "no greater than needed" is measured against that interest.

Texas's healthcare-specific rules matter for physicians and, under SB 1318 (effective September 1, 2025), for nurses, APRNs, physician assistants and dentists — and not for your therapy staff.

§ 15.501 also covers licensed dentists.

The SB 1318 limits took effect September 1, 2025 and apply only to covenants entered into or renewed on or after that date; agreements signed earlier stay under the prior law.

Two details matter when you apply the healthcare rules.

First, the discharge rule is written for physicians only: a psychiatrist's covenant is void if the physician is involuntarily discharged without good cause, but the same is not true for a nurse, APRN or PA.

Second, "practice of medicine" does not include managing or directing medical services in an administrative capacity, so a covenant limited to a medical director's administrative role sits outside § 15.50(b).

For your counselors, clinical social workers, MFTs, psychologists and BCBAs, none of this applies: their covenants face only the § 15.50(a) test.

For a licensed professional counselor, clinical social worker, MFT, psychologist or BCBA, the covenant turns on § 15.50(a)'s three measurements: time, geographic area and scope of activity.

Each must be reasonable, and together they must be no greater than needed to protect your goodwill or other business interest.

Texas sets no statutory buyout, one-year or five-mile limit for these licenses.

You pick the duration and the territory, and you defend them: when the agreement's primary purpose is personal services, the employer bears the burden of establishing that the covenant meets § 15.50.

Overbreadth has a known cost.

A Texas court must reform an overbroad non-compete to reasonable limits and enforce it as reformed — but once it does, the employer's remedy is an injunction only, with no damages for breaches of the covenant before the reformation.

Drafting a covenant broader than the interest you can prove does not add protection: a Texas court will reform it to reasonable limits, and once it does, your remedy is an injunction only.

How Texas courts treat client non-solicitation clauses was not researched for this page, so treat any non-solicit — client or employee — as a restrictive covenant that needs its own review from Texas employment counsel.

And do not copy a clause from another state's template: Montana, for one, bars contracts with its covered behavioral health providers — psychologists, social workers and professional counselors among them — from restricting them from treating or soliciting the employer's current patients after the relationship ends.

Your clinicians' ethics codes shape a departure regardless of what the contract says.

NASW standard 1.17(f) directs a social worker leaving a job to inform clients of their options for continuing services; ACA standard C.3.d bars counselors from using their job to recruit clients for a private practice; AAMFT standard 1.11 requires marriage and family therapists to make reasonable arrangements for the continuation of treatment rather than abandon clients in treatment; and BACB Ethics Code standard 3.16 requires behavior analysts to cover client transitions in their service agreements.

These codes bind the clinician's conduct — this research found no ethics-code provision that makes a restrictive covenant legally void.

Our guide to non-solicitation clauses maps both in full.

Draft to the test you actually face.

For therapy staff that is § 15.50(a): a covenant inside the written employment agreement, with time, area and scope limits you can connect to a concrete business interest.

Write the terms plainly — Texas requires clear, conspicuous writing for the healthcare covenants, and obscure drafting buys you nothing anywhere else.

Check which regime your paperwork sits in.

SB 1318 governs covenants entered into or renewed on or after September 1, 2025; earlier agreements stay under prior law.

If your employment agreements renew annually, ask Texas employment counsel how renewals and auto-renewals are treated.

Protect information, not clients.

Under the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, information such as a client list is a trade secret only if the owner takes reasonable measures to keep it secret and it has independent economic value from not being generally known — so limit who can pull a caseload list.

A DTSA injunction may not prevent a former clinician from taking a new job; any conditions on that employment must rest on evidence of threatened misappropriation, not merely on the information the clinician knows.

Layer tools that restrain less.

If the worry is recouping supervision hours or a credential you funded, a training repayment agreement is a separate instrument with its own limits — see our guide to training repayment agreements.

And reach for the levers you control first: caseload, supervision load and schedule.