Topic
Severance, noncompetes, and what you signed
Noncompetes, NDAs and nonsolicits, severance releases, arbitration clauses, handbooks, and trade secrets.
Split Rock Lighthouse — The North Shore's landmark. Photo: Dave Madgett Photograph: Split Rock Lighthouse on its cliff above Lake Superior.
11 guides
The guides
Just fired
The Exit Meeting: Every Document Handed Across the Table Runs on Its Own Statute and Its Own Clock
A separation agreement, a final paycheck, a personnel file, a termination-reason letter, company property, and an unemployment application are six different legal machines with six different deadlines. None of them requires a decision in the room.
Read the guideStill employed
A Minnesota Handbook Is Not a Contract Because It Exists — It Is a Contract When Its Words Are Definite Enough to Be an Offer
Pine River State Bank v. Mettille let an employee handbook become a binding unilateral contract in Minnesota. Feges v. Perkins Restaurants sent a progressive-discipline policy to a jury even though the manual was kept in the manager's office; Hunt v. IBM Mid America threw out a claim on identical-sounding language because the manual never said what a "serious offense" was. Definiteness is the whole fight.
Read the guideStill employed
An Oral Job Promise Is Not Void in Minnesota Because Nobody Wrote It Down — the Statute of Frauds Reaches Only Agreements That by Their Terms Cannot Be Performed Within One Year
Minn. Stat. § 513.01(1) bars an action on an agreement that by its terms is not to be performed within one year. Minnesota applies that to employment by asking whether the promise could have been carried out in a year — a promise of permanent employment could be, and a promise of a two-year minimum could not. What defeats most of these claims is not the writing requirement; it is at-will employment.
Read the guideLeaving
If you signed a Minnesota noncompete on or after July 1, 2023, it is void — and that does not touch your NDA
Minn. Stat. § 181.988 makes covenants not to compete void and unenforceable in Minnesota employment agreements entered into on or after July 1, 2023. It expressly leaves nondisclosure and nonsolicitation agreements outside its definition, and it does not apply to agreements signed before that date.
Read the guideLeaving
Minnesota's noncompete ban did not touch your NDA or your nonsolicit — and no Minnesota employment or civil-rights statute voids a settlement NDA about harassment
Minn. Stat. § 181.988, subd. 1(a), expressly writes nondisclosure and nonsolicitation agreements out of the definition of a covenant not to compete, so the 2023 ban leaves both standing. What limits an NDA in Minnesota is a short and specific list — § 181.172, § 181.932, the federal Speak Out Act, and the common-law reasonableness test — not a general rule.
Read the guideLeaving
A Release of an Age Claim Has to Clear Eight Statutory Requirements, and the Employer Carries the Burden of Proving It Did
29 U.S.C. § 626(f)(1) lists eight minimum conditions for a knowing and voluntary waiver of an Age Discrimination in Employment Act claim — including 21 days to consider, 45 days for a group program, and 7 days to revoke that cannot be shortened. Section 626(f)(3) puts the burden of proving the waiver on the party asserting it, and 29 C.F.R. § 1625.23 says keeping the money is not ratification.
Read the guideLeaving
The Minnesota Whistleblower Act Says Nothing About Releases — and the Human Rights Act's 15-Day Rescission Right Reaches Only Chapter 363A
Minn. Stat. §§ 181.931 to 181.935 contain no anti-waiver provision, and § 363A.31's rescission right is keyed to rights secured by chapter 363A, not chapter 181. Three federal provisions do reach a confidentiality clause — the trade-secret immunity notice, the Speak Out Act, and SEC Rule 21F-17 — and each one covers a narrow slice.
Read the guideLeaving
A severance release does not buy your employer everything — Minnesota and federal law wall off several claims you cannot sign away
What the release at the exit meeting actually reaches. Minnesota's Human Rights Act gives a 15-day right to rescind and requires written notice of it; federal law imposes 21-day, 45-day, and 7-day windows on any release of an age claim; and a private agreement cannot waive unemployment rights at all.
Read the guideLeaving
A Settlement Agreement Is a Contract — and Minn. Stat. § 572.35 Can Make a Mediated One Nonbinding on Its Face
Minn. Stat. § 572.35 says a mediated settlement agreement 'is not binding' unless it carries a specific written advisory or the parties were otherwise advised. Unemployment rights cannot be waived at all. A workers' compensation settlement needs a judge's approval where a party is unrepresented or the settlement is full and final on medical compensation. And the Speak Out Act reaches a clause agreed to before the dispute arises — not the one in the settlement itself.
Read the guideLeaving
Minnesota's Trade Secrets Act protects secret information, not what you learned how to do — and the element employers most often fail is one of their own
Minn. Stat. § 325C.01, subd. 5, makes a trade secret two things at once: information valuable because it is not generally known or readily ascertainable, and information the owner made reasonable efforts to keep secret. The Minnesota Supreme Court has held that the law of trade secrets will not protect talent or expertise, only secret information — and that an employer that never put its employees on notice of a duty of confidentiality has no claim.
Read the guideBringing a claim
An arbitration clause moves your claim to a different forum; it does not delete the claim — and Minnesota's own attempt to void these clauses was held preempted in 1995
9 U.S.C. § 2 and Minn. Stat. § 572B.06(a) both make an arbitration agreement enforceable except on grounds that would revoke any contract. The Minnesota Supreme Court held in Johnson v. Piper Jaffray that the Federal Arbitration Act preempts the Human Rights Act's voiding provision. What survives the clause is the substance of the claim, the remedies the arbitrator may award, and — since 2022 — an employee's election to take a sexual harassment or sexual assault dispute to court anyway.
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Glossary
Terms that come up
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.