Red State Lawmakers Look at Noncompete Bans for Low-Wage Workers

The movement toward shielding low-wage workers from job-mobility restrictions could be gaining more bipartisan appeal, as a handful of GOP-majority state legislatures consider mirroring their Democratic counterparts’ recent efforts.

Iowa is close to becoming the first state with a Republican-led legislature to ban employee noncompetes specifically for low-wage workers. A similar GOP-sponsored proposal is pending in West Virginia, based on model legislation unveiled last July by the non-partisan Uniform Law Commission.

“There’s been a lot of attention paid to making sure that lower-wage employees are not subject to noncompetes. There seems to be broad political consensus on that,” said ...