The Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy’s newly published issue is the first academic symposium to engage the FTC ban.
The University of Florida’s Journal of Law and Public Policy
The FTC’s recent ban on noncompetes has been a critical focus of academics, lawyers, and policy organizations working on issues of worker mobility law and reform.
The University of Florida’s Journal of Law and Public Policy’s (JLPP) just-published symposium issue is a leading example of this collaboration. Volume 34, issue 2 (2024) – the first academic symposium to engage the FTC ban – features authors of this expert community discussing both the ban and a promising regulatory alternative: The Uniform Law Commission’s (“ULC”) Uniform Restrictive Employment Agreement Act (“UREAA” or Act).
Promulgated in 2021, UREAA bans all restraints on lower-wage workers but permit restraints on higher-wage workers subject to comprehensive requirements. These include strong employer disclosure obligations, caps on the duration and scope of restraints, and strict limits on the kinds of proprietary employer interests that justify the use of a restraint in the first place. Employers must use the least restrictive restraint possible to address only their legitimate needs. In addition to penalties, violators may be forced to pay damages and attorneys’ fees to affected workers.
UREAA’s balanced approach is the product of extensive vetting by an ideologically diverse group of lawyers and academics. Professor Rachel Arnow-Richman (Florida), who chaired the JLPP symposium and served on the UREAA drafting committee, praised the ULC process. She describes it as “proof of concept” for the idea that building consensus yields a better product: “I was impressed every day by the expertise, open-mindedness, and commitment of the group. And I was very proud to be one of them.”
Professor Arnow-Richman sought to achieve the same spirit and style of collaboration in chairing the JLLP symposium. Most law school symposia contain only academic contributions, but the JLPP special issue incorporates the voices of prominent practitioners. These include Richard Cassidy, who chaired the UREAA drafting committee, competition law attorneys Russell Beck and Sarah Tischler, and workplace rights attorneys David Seligman and Rachel Dempsey of Towards Justice, a non-profit firm that has brought several high-profile cases challenging egregious misuse of anti-competitive restraints. Academic contributors include Arnow-Richman along with Professors David Doorey (York), Orly Lobel (San Diego), and Stewart Schwab (Cornell), who served as UREAA’s Chief Reporter.
The JLPP Symposium exemplifies the value of robust conversation between law professors and the legal community. Arnow-Richman imagines the issue might inspire other workplace law faculty to reach outside the proverbial ivory tower: “Lawyers and law professors have a lot to offer each other. My scholarship is definitely the better for it, and I saw that my work really mattered.” She hopes that continued dialogue will achieve concrete results and, ideally, lasting change.