The Florida CHOICE Act

The CHOICE Act officially went into effect as of July 1st, 2025, in the State of Florida. Most see it as a way for businesses to implement more extreme restrictions on their employees, although the name would lead you to believe differently. Cathleen sat down with partner attorney Gabe Roberts, an expert on the topic closely following the progression of the CHOICE Act from the start.

So What Does CHOICE Actually Stand For?

• C – Contracts
• H – Honoring
• O – Opportunity
• I –  Investment
• C – Confidentiality 
• E – Economic growth

The full title — the Florida Contracts Honoring Opportunity, Investment, Confidentiality, and Economic Growth Act — sounds, on its surface, like something designed to empower everyone involved. Cathleen Scott and Gabe Roberts unpack the details of the CHOICE Act and reveal a much different story.

What Changed, and Why the Wording Matters More Thank You Think

Before the CHOICE Act, Florida law surrounding noncompete agreements restricted employees from taking on competing employment after leaving a company. That distinction — the word competing – carried the legal weight. Courts interpreted it with a defined scope. The business of your former employer and new employer had to be in competition with one another for a noncompete clause to apply.

The CHOICE Act changed that word. Now the restriction applies if a former employee engages in similar employment.

That single-word substitution may seem minor on the surface, but Roberts makes clear it opens a much wider door. As he described it on the podcast, the CHOICE Act has felt like “the Boogeyman in labor law in Florida.” And for good reason. In theory a lot can fall under what similar could mean that would not necessarily be considered competitive under the old standard. Two jobs can share overlapping skills, tools, or industries without those employers actually competing with one another. 

The Employer Holds All the Cards

What makes the CHOICE Act particularly striking is how much discretionary authority it places entirely in the hands of the employer.

Under the new law:

• The employer decides what “similar” means
  •  There is no standardized definition built into the statute. The employer’s interpretation is the starting point, and the burden falls on the employee to challenge it.
•  The employer decides how long your Garden Leave lasts —up to four years
  •  Garden Leave, in its traditional context, is a period during which an employee who has given notice is kept on payroll but relieved of their suits — essentially paid to stay at home while a noncompete or transition period runs its course. Under the CHOICE Act, that window can stretch to four years at the employer’s discretion.
• The employer is only required to pay a percentage of your base salary during that period
  •  Regardless of whether your base salary actually reflects what you earn from that company.

Cathleen Scott captured the dynamic during the conversation: “It feels like the employer has all the control here — they decide how long and they decide whether they’re going to pay you, and at any moment they can say “just kidding.”” 

Roberts and Scott also stress one more consequential change that tends to get overlooked in broader discussions of the law. Under the CHOICE Act, when an employer seeks to enforce a covered agreement, a court is not merely permitted to issue an injunction against the departing employee – it must do so. The Statute compels courts to pull an employee from their new workplace and block them from working there until the legal matter is resolved. The burden then falls on the employee to prove that they will not be performing work “similar” to what they did for their former employer — using a definition of similar that the former employer largely gets to set.

The situation becomes even more complicated when you examine how Garden Leave and noncompete agreements interact — or more precisely, how they fail to interact — under the CHOICE Act.

In its traditional application, Garden Leave functions as the paid component of a noncompete arrangement. You serve your notice period on payroll, and that time counts against your noncompete restriction. The two concepts work in tandem, giving the employee some financial compensation while their career is restricted.

The CHOICE Act treats them as two separate statutes.

The implication of that separation could be significant. Roberts points out that under the law’s structure, it is theoretically possible for an employer to have a “covered noncompete” agreement with an employee that does not qualify as a “covered garden leave” agreement — or vice versa. The two protections, and the obligations that come with them, do not automatically work injunction with one another.

Who is most affected?

Not every Florida worker is equally exposed to the CHOICE Act’s reach. The law applies specifically to what it defines as “covered employees” — those earning more than twice the annual mean wage of the country where their employer is primarily based. That threshold is designed to target higher-earning professionals, and in practice, it lands hardest on one sector in particular, the financial industry.

Here is why: the law defines “salary” specifically as base compensation. It does not include bonuses, commissions, tips, or what the statute itself calls “anticipated but not indeterminable compensation.” For many professionals in salaried office roles, that distinction may be manageable. But for someone working as a financial advisor, a broker, or a high-performing sales professional, their base salary can represent only a fraction of what they actually take home.

Under the CHOICE Act, their former employer is only obligated to continue paying a percentage of that fraction.

Origin of the CHOICE Act

In April 2024, the Federal Trade Commission issued a final ruling that would have banned noncompete clauses nationwide. The federal government was stepping in to say that employers could no longer use noncompete agreements to restrict where their former employees could work.

Federal Courts blocked the ruling, determining that the FTC had overstepped its statutory authority in attempting to implement a ban of that scope. In February 2026, the FTC formally removed the ruling from the Code of Federal Regulations entirely.

Ken Griffin – hedge fund billionaire and founder of Citadel — had vested interest in the outcome. When the FTC signaled it intended to ban noncompete clauses nationwide, Griffin did not wait to see how the courts would rule.

Ken Griffin lobbied Florida Senator Thomas J. Leek, a representative from Tallahassee, to introduce legislation that would move in direct opposition to the FTC’s efforts. The bill that Senator Leek proposed became the CHOICE Act — and its reach was drafted to extend well beyond Florida’s borders. 

Roberts believes Griffin’s relocation of Citadel’s headquarters from Illinois to Florida was a deliberate move to position the company to work alongside Florida legislators and introduce exactly this kind of employer-friendly framework.

The CHOICE Act is now the law. It is enforceable. And if you are a covered employee in the state of Florida, your employment agreement may carry consequences that extend beyond what you currently realize.

If any of this applies to your situation, the attorneys at Scott Law Team encourage you to seek counsel before signing — and to understand exactly what you are agreeing to.

Because under the CHOICE Act, the choice may not be yours as the name suggests.

This blog post is based on the information discussion on the Scott Law Team Podcast featuring attorneys Cathleen Scott and Gabe Roberts. Legal sources include the Florida CHOICE ACT (ch. 2025-213), Florida Statutes 542.41-542.45, and Article III, Section 8 of the Florida Constitution