Are C.H. Robinson’s non-compete agreements too strict?

TL;DR C.H. Robinson required certain employees to sign sweeping non-compete “Confidentiality and Protection of Business” agreements and later sued former employees and their new employer, Traffic Tech, arguing those restrictive covenants were breached.

The Eighth Circuit Court concluded the core customer/business-partner restriction was overbroad (meaning it was so expansive it could bar workers from engaging with entities that merely “potentially could conduct business” with C.H. Robinson) rendering it unenforceable under Minnesota law, with related consequences for the interference claim.
If you care about corporate accountability, worker freedom, and the real-world economic fallout of corporate overreach, the details below matter.

Table of Contents

1. The Restrictive Covenant as Corporate Power: What the Contract Tried to Do
2. Allegations Timeline: What Went Wrong and When
3. Economic Fallout and Wealth Disparity in the Logistics Labor Market
4. Corporate Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Corporate Accountability
5. Public Health and Corporate Pollution: Why This Still Matters for Society

The Restrictive Covenant as Corporate Power: What the Contract Tried to Do

A two-year restraint with a definition that can swallow a market

The Confidentiality and Protection of Business agreement (which I’ll henceforth be referring to as CPB agreement for brevity’s sake lol) described a two-year post-employment restriction barring an ex-employee from directly or indirectly soliciting, engaging, selling to, rendering services to, or doing business with a “Business Partner” or even a “prospective Business Partner,” if the employee had worked with them, had regular contact, worked on the account, or had access to confidential information.

The agreement defined “Business Partner” broadly. So they weren’t just customers, but also included shit like carriers, consultants, vendors, and essentially any entity that has conducted business with or potentially could conduct business with the company.

Why does this matter? Because the use (and attempted enforcement) of overbroad restrictions that functionally deter workers from earning a living in their industry, even when those restrictions sweep far beyond narrow customer non-solicitation.

So I’m sure you can see why this might be considered “overly restrictive!”

Allegations Timeline: What Went Wrong and When

Economic Fallout and Wealth Disparity in the Logistics Labor Market

Restrictive covenants like this expansive do not only “protect goodwill” of the corporation. They also have further downstream effects when they can depress wages, constrain bargaining power, and reduce job-to-job mobility. These be classic ingredients of wealth disparity under neoliberal capitalism, where the freedom of capital is celebrated and the freedom of labor is litigated.

Even when a company ultimately loses, the costs aren’t evenly distributed.

A multinational can treat litigation and enforcement attempts as overhead. Individual employees, by contrast, face career disruption, legal anxiety, and the practical risk that other employers will avoid “trouble hires.”

That imbalance is itself a form of economic fallout (a shadow tax on labor mobility) whether or not it appears on a balance sheet.

Corporate Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Corporate Accountability

Corporate social responsibility cannot be a press release

A credible corporate social responsibility program is incompatible with contract language so broad it risks functionally excluding people from their trade. The Eighth Circuit’s description of the clause’s scope (covering “any” entity that “potentially could conduct business”) captures the underlying ethical failure: it treats competition as illegitimate and worker autonomy as optional.

Public Health and Corporate Pollution: Why This Still Matters for Society

In my extremely humble opinion, the public health dimension still matters in a broader, non-speculative sense: when workers’ livelihoods are threatened, communities experience stress, instability, and reduced access to resources that support well-being.

Likewise, the logistics sector is foundational infrastructure; when market dynamism is suppressed by overbroad restraints, society bears second-order costs. Stuff such as less innovation, less competition, and fewer pathways for workers to improve conditions.

The lesson is about systems: the same governance mindset that tolerates overreach in contracts often tolerates externalizing harms elsewhere (including corporate pollution) unless constrained by enforceable accountability.