Minnesota Employment Guide is a publication of Madgett Law, LLC. It is general information about Minnesota law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Whether any of it applies to your job turns on facts this site cannot know. This is attorney advertising.

No statutory definition

Nondisclosure agreement

A contract restricting what an employee may disclose — a category Minnesota's noncompete statute names in order to exclude it from the ban, and does not define — nor does any other section of chapters 177, 181, or 325C.

Nothing on this page is advice about your job, and no article can be. If you want your own facts looked at, a Minnesota employment attorney can do that — and several of the deadlines described on this site are short enough that waiting is itself a decision.

Also called: NDA; confidentiality agreement.

A search of the chapters that use the phrase turns up no definition of “nondisclosure agreement.” Minn. Stat. § 181.988, subd. 1(a), names the category only to carve it out of the noncompete ban:

A covenant not to compete does not include a nondisclosure agreement, or agreement designed to protect trade secrets or confidential information.

A full-text search of the Revisor’s official chapter file for chapter 181 on September 8, 2026 returns four uses of “nondisclosure” and no definition; chapters 177 and 325C do not use the word at all. This site therefore uses “nondisclosure agreement” for a contract that restricts what you may say or share, as opposed to where you may work — because that is the line § 181.988 draws, and it is the line that decides whether the ban applies.

Where this comes up

Sources checked September 8, 2026. Citations independently verified against the primary source September 8, 2026.

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