When the Federal Trade Commission announced its intention to ban noncompete agreements in 2023, John Roffino submitted his own testimonial in support of the plan. A disabled veteran of the war in Afghanistan, Roffino was tied down by a noncompete provision in his medical device sales job in Texas. He felt trapped.
“I am legally forced to work for my company out of fear of a mega million dollar company ruining my life,” he wrote in a public comment. “Please ban non compete agreements for the sake of American progress.”
Two years later, Roffino’s initial excitement over the reform has given way to deep concern. The FTC’s rule has been blocked in federal court amid employer challenges, and the incoming Trump administration could hasten the death of the rule by declining to defend it on appeal.
Fearing just such a scenario, Roffino filed a motion in federal court Monday seeking to intervene in the case. He was joined by Daniella Emmer, a therapist subject to a noncompete agreement, and the advocacy group Small Business Majority, arguing that the court should allow them to fight for the rule if the Trump administration abandons it.
An intervention by someone like Roffino could be what keeps the noncompete rule alive under appeal, and perhaps brings the issue before the Supreme Court.
“The only people that benefit from a noncompete agreement are the people who hold other people under one.”
– John Roffino, a war veteran who sells medical devices
Roffino, 42, says banning noncompetes is about preserving freedom in the labor market and letting workers take their talents where they wish.
“We want people to be able to go out there and make a better life for themselves,” he told HuffPost this week. “The only people that benefit from a noncompete agreement are the people who hold other people under one.”
He thinks both Republicans and Democrats should back the ban: “To me, it screams ‘supporting capitalism.’”
Noncompete agreements forbid workers from taking a job at a competing firm for a certain amount of time after leaving. Employers claim that the pacts protect their investments in training and intellectual property, but the FTC says they illegally suppress wages and stifle growth by locking workers into their current jobs. Once reserved for highly paid workers like executives and software engineers, the agreements have in recent years tied up hairstylists and even fast-food sandwich makers.
The FTC rule would invalidate the vast majority of existing noncompetes and forbid employers from trying to enforce any new ones. The agency projects that the rule would boost annual earnings for the average worker by $524 and create another 8,500 businesses each year. The rule was a priority for FTC Chair Lina Khan, a Biden appointee who’s become the face of the progressive antitrust movement.
Businesses, however, have challenged the constitutionality of the ban, claiming that federal law doesn’t grant the FTC power to implement it.
Until now, the FTC and the Justice Department have supported the rule in court, but there’s good reason to think the Trump administration will walk away from it despite its public support. Trump’s nominee for FTC chair, Andrew Ferguson, made his opposition clear when, as a member of the commission, he dissented from issuing the rule, calling it “unlawful.”
“That causes deep concerns for us that the incoming FTC isn’t going to defend the rule,” said David Seligman, whose legal aid firm, Towards Justice, is part of the team representing Roffino.
Khan’s aggressive agenda has earned her some Republican fans, including Vice President-elect JD Vance. Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who was President-elect Donald Trump’s original pick to lead the Justice Department, even submitted an amicus brief in support of the noncompete ban. But Gaetz’s nomination imploded in scandal, and a recent spat over guest worker visas suggests that wealthy GOP business interests could win out over the populist wing in internal MAGA policy brawls.
The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority has been hostile to federal agencies’ regulatory powers, but Seligman says the reform is worth battling for.
“We’re prepared to take up that fight and put it directly to the Supreme Court,” he said. “This is exactly the type of circumstance where intervention is absolutely essential.”
An FTC spokesperson declined to comment on the effort by Roffino and others to get involved in the case.
Roffino worked for a company selling medical devices that help patients regain mobility after surgery. He says the firm did a lot of business with the Veterans Administration, making it a great fit for an Army vet who’d seen combat during two tours in Afghanistan. (He asked that his former employer not be named for fear of legal reprisal.)
He says he was unaware he’d signed a noncompete as part of the onboarding process until he floated the idea of leaving to a co-worker, to “do the same thing but better.” The co-worker’s response: “Too bad you signed a noncompete.”
“My ability to do that [was] literally owned by somebody in another state, and it felt really unfair,” said Roffino, a father of two.
He compared signing the noncompete to checking the boxes below the legal boilerplate when you download an app on your phone. “You just kinda click through them and you don’t think twice about it,” he said.
“We’re prepared to take up that fight and put it directly to the Supreme Court.”
– David Seligman, attorney, Towards Justice
More than 1 in 4 U.S. workers is likely subject to a noncompete agreement, and more than half of businesses use them, according to a 2019 study by the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank. It’s common for the contracts to be slipped in with hiring materials, including other restrictive covenants like nondisclosure agreements.
Some states have limited or outlawed their use, including California, which strengthened a state noncompete ban in 2024. But noncompetes can still confine workers even when they’re toothless, since many people would rather not test whether their employer will come after them. EPI estimated that 45% of California workplaces used noncompetes despite them being unenforceable in court.
In Roffino’s case, the noncompete barred him from doing similar work in his sales territory. The contract said he couldn’t engage in “the business of researching, developing, providing, rendering, manufacturing, selling and distributing” orthopedic medical devices within two years of leaving his employer, according to a declaration he filed in court.
He says he left the job in early 2023 because he’d exhausted the sales potential in his role and had little room to grow. He ended up in a sales job that pays about two-thirds of his old salary as he waits for the noncompete window to close. He says plenty of other workers in the health care industry find themselves in a similar situation.
“I run into people at my new job who are just waiting out their noncompetes,” Roffino said. “It’s alarming. Who knows how much better treatments would be, but people simply can’t leave their jobs.”