Oklahoma Non-Compete Laws (2026): Are Non-Competes Enforceable?

Oklahoma voids employee non-competes by statute, with one deliberate gap. Under 15 O.S. section 219A, a worker who agreed not to compete "shall be permitted to engage in the same business as that conducted by the former employer or in a similar business" after leaving, as long as the former employee does not directly solicit the sale of goods or services from the former employer's established customers. Any contract term that conflicts with that rule "shall be void and unenforceable."

So a clause barring you from working for a competitor does not hold up in Oklahoma, while a clause barring you from directly soliciting the employer's established customers can. Separate sections allow covenants when a business is sold or a partnership dissolves, and a 2013 law takes clauses about recruiting co-workers outside the ban altogether. For how other states compare, see our non-compete laws by state guide.

Information last verified on 2026-10-08. This article has not been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

Jurisdiction scope: This article covers Oklahoma's restraint-of-trade statutes in Title 15 of the Oklahoma Statutes (sections 217, 218, 219, 219A and 219B) and the Oklahoma Supreme Court decisions applying them, with a short note on the federal FTC rule. It does not cover trade-secret claims (see Oklahoma trade secret laws) or severance agreements (see Oklahoma severance pay laws).

Are non-competes enforceable in Oklahoma?

Not as a bar on working for a competitor. Oklahoma's rule comes from two statutes that work together.

Section 217 is the general restraint-of-trade statute. It says every contract restraining anyone "from exercising a lawful profession, trade or business of any kind," other than as sections 218 and 219 (and one further cross-referenced 2001 provision) allow, "is to that extent void." The cross-reference comes from the 2001 bill that amended section 217 and created section 219A (Senate Bill 662, Laws 2001, chapter 406). In that bill, Section 2 amends a farm-products central filing provision in Title 12A, while section 219A is Section 4.

Section 219A, added in 2001, speaks to employees directly:

"A. A person who makes an agreement with an employer, whether in writing or verbally, not to compete with the employer after the employment relationship has been terminated, shall be permitted to engage in the same business as that conducted by the former employer or in a similar business as that conducted by the former employer as long as the former employee does not directly solicit the sale of goods, services or a combination of goods and services from the established customers of the former employer. B. Any provision in a contract between an employer and an employee in conflict with the provisions of this section shall be void and unenforceable." 15 O.S. section 219A

Section 219A took effect on June 4, 2001 under an emergency clause. It covers spoken agreements as well as written ones, and it applies to an agreement covering the period "after the employment relationship has been terminated," with no distinction between workers who quit and workers who were fired or laid off.

What an Oklahoma employer can still restrict

The customer non-solicit

Section 219A's carve-out is narrow on its face: it covers a former employee who would "directly solicit the sale of goods, services or a combination of goods and services from the established customers of the former employer." A clause written more broadly than that conflicts with section 219A and is void to that extent under subsection B.

Clauses about recruiting co-workers

Section 219B, effective November 1, 2013, says a contract provision barring an employee or independent contractor from soliciting, "directly or indirectly, actively or inactively," the employer's employees or independent contractors to work for someone else "shall not be construed as a restraint from exercising a lawful profession, trade or business of any kind." Sections 217, 218, 219 and 219A do not apply to those clauses.

Selling a business or dissolving a partnership

Sections 218 and 219 keep two older exceptions. A person who sells the goodwill of a business may agree not to carry on a similar business within a specified county and any contiguous counties, or a specified city or town, while the buyer carries on a like business there. Partners may make the same kind of agreement upon or in anticipation of dissolving the partnership.

Both sections also fix an agreement that reaches too far geographically. An otherwise lawful agreement that exceeds those territorial limits "may be deemed valid, but only within the county comprising the primary place of the conduct of the subject business" (or of the partnership's business) "and within any counties contiguous thereto."

How Oklahoma courts have read the statutes

Mammana: striking the bad parts of a surgeon's covenant

In Cardiovascular Surgical Specialists, Corp. v. Mammana, 2002 OK 27, 61 P.3d 210, a surgeon's agreement barred him from performing cardiovascular surgery within 20 miles for two years and from soliciting referral sources for nine months. The contract was signed in 1996, before section 219A existed, so the Oklahoma Supreme Court applied section 217.

The court held those two sections unreasonable and void, and said it "modifies the agreement, without supplying any material terms, by striking the two offending sections." What remained was a one-year bar on actively soliciting the employer's patients, which a footnote called consistent with the Legislature's recent enactment of section 219A.

Nitro-Lift: a broad covenant held void, then vacated on other grounds

In Howard v. Nitro-Lift Technologies, L.L.C., 273 P.3d 20 (Okla. 2011), the Oklahoma Supreme Court held two-year covenants that barred work for any oil or gas company in the United States earning 5% of its gross revenue from nitrogen generation, the solicitation of any past or present customer or supplier, and the hiring or solicitation of the company's officers or employees "void and unenforceable as against Oklahoma's public policy" expressed in section 219A. The court read section 219A as barring employers from binding employees to agreements that stop them from finding work in the same business or industry, with the only exception a bar on soliciting established customers. It refused to modify the covenants because that would have meant rewriting the agreement and supplying at least one material term.

That opinion carries a significant caveat. In Nitro-Lift Technologies, L.L.C. v. Howard (No. 11-1377, decided November 26, 2012), the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the decision and sent the case back, holding under the Federal Arbitration Act that the validity question belonged to the arbitrator. The U.S. Supreme Court did not address what section 219A means. The 2011 opinion is therefore a vacated statement of the Oklahoma court's reading, and the statute's own text, together with Mammana, carries the analysis.

What a court does with an overbroad clause

From those decisions: an Oklahoma court may strike an offending provision and enforce the rest without supplying material terms (Mammana), but it does not rewrite a covenant that would need substantial rewriting to survive (the vacated Nitro-Lift opinion). For sale-of-business and partnership covenants, sections 218 and 219 themselves cut an overbroad territory down to the home county and contiguous counties.

Doctors and other health care workers

Oklahoma has no physician-specific non-compete statute that our research found. A keyword search of Titles 15, 40, 59 and 78 of the Oklahoma Statutes turned up non-compete language only in Title 15, though a keyword search is not a complete review. Mammana shows the Oklahoma Supreme Court applying the general restraint-of-trade statute to a surgeon's covenant. Lawyer covenants fall under the Oklahoma Rules of Professional Conduct, which our research did not review.

Out-of-state law and forum clauses

Whether an Oklahoma worker can be held to a non-compete through a clause choosing another state's law is an open question in the sources reviewed. The agreement in Nitro-Lift chose Louisiana law and arbitration in Houston, but the Oklahoma Supreme Court expressly declined to decide whether Oklahoma public policy overrides that choice. No Oklahoma statute voiding such clauses was found.

Penalties and remedies

Sections 217 through 219B contain no penalty, fee-shifting or damages remedy for the employee. The consequence they set is that a conflicting provision is "void and unenforceable" (section 219A(B)). No state agency is given an enforcement role in those sections; disputes go to court.

Trade secrets and confidentiality

Oklahoma's non-compete statutes do not address confidentiality agreements. Protection of an employer's confidential business information runs through trade-secret law, a separate body of rules; see Oklahoma trade secret laws.

Recent and pending changes

• 2024, vetoed: Senate Bill 1543 would have broadened section 219A's customer carve-out to cover soliciting "directly or indirectly, actively or inactively" and to reach the former employer's independent contractors as well as established customers. It passed the Senate 41-3 on March 5, 2024 and the House 74-2 on April 23, 2024, and the governor vetoed it on April 30, 2024. It is not law; section 219A still carries its 2001 text.
• 2025 and 2026 sessions: the Legislature's report of measures by statute citation lists no bill in either session citing sections 217, 218, 219, 219A or 219B.
• 2027 session: the same report showed no prefiled measures citing those sections as of October 8, 2026.

The FTC non-compete rule

Oklahoma's statutes, not the federal rule, decide these cases. The FTC's 2024 ban never took effect: a federal court in Texas set it aside on August 20, 2024 (Ryan, LLC v. FTC, No. 3:24-CV-00986-E, N.D. Tex.), the FTC voted on September 5, 2025 to abandon its appeals, and the rule left the Code of Federal Regulations on February 12, 2026. The agency still brings individual cases, including an April 15, 2026 action requiring pest-control company Rollins to stop enforcing non-competes against more than 18,000 employees. More: FTC non-compete ban struck down.

What this page does not answer

Our research did not establish the following, so this page states none:

• whether any Oklahoma appellate court decided a section 219A case in 2025 or 2026;
• what happened in Nitro-Lift after the 2012 remand.

If you are being held to one

Under Oklahoma law the questions that matter are whether the clause stops you from working in the same or a similar business (void under section 219A), whether it goes beyond directly soliciting the employer's established customers, whether it is really a clause about recruiting co-workers (section 219B), and when it was signed, since section 219A took effect June 4, 2001 and Mammana applied section 217 to an agreement signed in 1996. A lawyer licensed in Oklahoma can review a specific agreement. If the job has just ended, our Oklahoma final paycheck laws page covers when wages are due.

Related

• Non-compete laws by state
• Oklahoma trade secret laws
• Oklahoma severance pay laws
• Oklahoma final paycheck laws

Disclaimer: This article provides general legal information about Oklahoma non-compete law under 15 O.S. sections 217 through 219B, not legal advice. The information was last verified on 2026-10-08. Oklahoma non-compete disputes are decided by the courts; for advice about a specific agreement, contact a legal aid office or a lawyer licensed in Oklahoma.

Last updated: 2026-10-08.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are non-competes enforceable in Oklahoma?

Not as a bar on working for a competitor. 15 O.S. section 219A lets a former employee work in the same or a similar business and voids conflicting contract terms; only a bar on directly soliciting the former employer's established customers survives.

Can my former employer stop me from contacting customers in Oklahoma?

Section 219A allows a restriction on directly soliciting the sale of goods or services from the former employer's established customers. A clause written more broadly than that conflicts with section 219A and is void to that extent.

Is a no-poach or employee non-solicitation clause enforceable in Oklahoma?

15 O.S. section 219B says a clause barring an employee or contractor from soliciting the employer's employees or contractors is not a restraint of trade, and sections 217 to 219A do not apply to it.

Does a verbal non-compete count in Oklahoma?

Yes. Section 219A applies to an agreement not to compete made whether in writing or verbally, and it lets the former employee work in the same or a similar business either way.

Are physician non-competes enforceable in Oklahoma?

No physician-specific statute was found; the general statutes apply. In Cardiovascular Surgical Specialists v. Mammana, 2002 OK 27, the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck a surgeon's 20-mile, two-year practice ban and left only a one-year bar on soliciting patients.

Did Oklahoma change its non-compete law in 2024?

No. Senate Bill 1543 would have broadened the customer carve-out in section 219A, but the governor vetoed it on April 30, 2024.

Does the FTC non-compete ban apply in Oklahoma?

No. A federal court set the FTC rule aside on August 20, 2024, and the FTC removed it from the Code of Federal Regulations on February 12, 2026.