The “Silent Pandemic” of mental and behavioral health needs continues to take a significant toll on individuals and families in this State. Despite significant growth in the number of service providers, there continue to be significant shortages in needed services, and individuals and families remain on long waitlists for these services.

In Utah, there are some larger mental and behavioral health service providers who utilize non-competition agreements that employees are required to sign. If an otherwise qualified individual leaves employment with such a provider, for any reason, they may be banned from helping an individual in need in Utah for an entire year, or be subject to costly litigation, even though the waitlists for services often exceed this length of time. Further, the professional is also unable to work in their field and is often required to take entry level work in an effort to get by, which can have negative impacts on their family and children as well.

As a citizen of Utah, I am signing this Petition to affirm the following principles:

1. Mental and behavioral health needs should be taken seriously;

2. Helping one person with mental or behavioral health can improve conditions for an entire family, school, or community, as all may be negatively impacted by inappropriate conduct from one member;

3. Risk of suicide increases, especially for the autistic or otherwise disabled individuals, when they cannot access needed services;

4. Businesses have no legitimate interest in exploiting a serious need by using non-compete agreements to restrict the number of providers and thereby keeping the waitlist for services long; and

5. Restricting or eliminating non-compete agreements in mental, behavioral, or other forms of healthcare can increase the number of individual providers and help to decrease the harm that individuals, families, and communities experience while they or their members wait for needed care.

Accordingly, I formally Petition the Utah Legislature to act and pass legislation that confirms it is against the public policy of the State of Utah for non-competes to be enforced in critical services when there are such significant waitlists and to take other action as necessary to reduce or limit the use of non-compete agreements that seriously limit the ability of individuals to receive needed services.