The Open Markets Institute Applauds Worker Ric Davidson and Legal Team for Stepping Up to Defend the Federal Non-Compete Ban

The Open Markets Institute today commended Texas-based worker Ric Davidson, his counsel at Gustafson Gluek, Burns Charest, and Towards Justice for stepping in to defend the Federal Trade Commission’s landmark ban on non-compete clauses—an essential policy to protect workers’ freedom to change jobs and start new businesses. 

In April 2024, after years of research and public engagement, the FTC issued a rule banning non-compete clauses nationwide. These contracts currently restrict approximately 30 million workers in the United States—preventing nurses, physicians, engineers, restaurant cooks, security guards, and countless others from seeking better pay and working conditions or applying their skills in new ventures. The FTC found that non-competes suppress wages, stifle entrepreneurship, and weaken innovation and local economies. 

Corporate interests quickly sued to block the rule, and in August 2024 a federal judge in Texas put the ban on hold nationwide. While the FTC initially appealed this decision and secured a favorable ruling in a parallel case in Pennsylvania, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson abruptly abandoned the defense of the rule last month—after promising in January to deliver a “golden age” for American workers.  

For more background on this reversal, see a recent op-ed by Open Markets Legal Director Sandeep Vaheesan and former FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya. 

Now, Davidson and his legal team are seeking to intervene to defend the rule in court. Their effort aims not only to free Davidson from an unfair non-compete imposed by his former employer, but to protect the rights of millions of Americans who remain unable to fully use their skills because of these coercive and anticompetitive restrictions. 

"We are pleased to help represent Mr. Davidson and are hopeful that he will get his day in court to help resurrect the ban on non-compete agreements which are restricting the economic freedoms of thousands of workers in the United States” said Dan Hedlund at Gustafson Gluek. 

"The FTC has abandoned millions of Americans, just like Ric Davidson, who want only the freedom to live out the promise of the American Dream: the right to make a living through their work," said Rachel Dempsey, Associate Director at Towards Justice.  "We are deeply grateful to Mr. Davidson for stepping up where the government has failed to take over the fight for American workers." 

“The stakes could not be higher,” said Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at the Open Markets Institute. “If corporate trade associations succeed in striking down the non-compete ban, they will lock millions of Americans in place—denying them the ability to pursue better jobs and denying communities the new businesses and innovation that come when workers are free. Ric Davidson is standing up for himself, but he is also standing up for the entire workforce.” 

The Open Markets Institute has been leading the fight to abolish non-compete clauses for nearly a decade. In 2019, Open Markets organized and filed a petition urging the FTC to ban these clauses nationwide. Since then, the organization has mobilized labor unions, worker advocates, and small business leaders, and submitted expert legal and economic briefs supporting the FTC’s authority to protect workers’ economic liberty. 

 Open Markets believes that the law and evidence overwhelmingly support the FTC’s rule—and applauds Davidson’s intervention as a critical step to ensure the promise of worker freedom is not undone by corporate power.