To Compete or Noncompete: Lessons on the Impact of Unenforceable Noncompete Agreements in the Entertainment Industry

Authors

• Guy MannickFollow

Abstract

Economic and legal literature has increasingly focused on how the American legal system fails workers. One way it does so is through employee noncompetition agreements (“NCA” or “noncompete”) that limit a worker’s ability to join another company, often for better compensation and/or more responsibility. Some states enforce NCAs if they are reasonable in scope, geography, and duration; others either prohibit their application to certain types of workers or (as in California) outright prohibit them in most circumstances. More narrowly, new empirical literature about the behavioral effects of unenforceable noncompete agreements raises new questions about the behavioral impact on workers.

This Note examines the role of unenforceable and—in some cases, illegal—NCAs in the entertainment industry. The entertainment industry is particularly beneficial to examine for at least four reasons. First, a large part of the entertainment industry is in California, where NCAs are generally banned. Second, despite California’s rule, employment contracts regularly contain unenforceable noncompete agreements or restrictive covenants that operate like NCAs. Third, the norms and practices in entertainment can be viewed as a test case for a post-noncompete world because workers in the industry are uniquely mobile and compete aggressively for a limited number of jobs. Finally, limited empirical analysis exists on the behavioral effects of these unenforceable agreements, and recent scholarship makes it possible to examine the behavioral impact of unenforceable noncompete agreements in the entertainment industry through individual narratives and industry norms. Despite being ripe for research, little work has been done to examine the human cost of unenforceable NCAs, and no literature examines the harm to entertainment workers. Misconceptions about the entertainment industry—perhaps driven by a disproportionate focus on celebrities—obscure a deeply inequitable marketplace where employers leverage unenforceable restrictions on an actor’s ability to compete to restrain artists and rob them of the economic value they generate. The final portion of this Note examines potential remedies to combat unenforceable NCAs, exploring individualized and collective remedies and a critique of existing efforts to penalize unenforceable NCAs.

Recommended Citation

Guy Mannick, To Compete or Noncompete: Lessons on the Impact of Unenforceable Noncompete Agreements in the Entertainment Industry, 32 Wash. & Lee J. Civ. Rts. & Soc. Just. 619 (2026).
Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol32/iss2/7