What happened
The Federal Trade Commission finalized a consent order requiring Rollins Inc. to stop enforcing noncompete agreements against more than 18,000 employees nationwide, closing out an agency action targeting worker restrictions in the pest-control industry.
The FTC said Rollins, one of the country's largest pest-control companies, had imposed noncompete agreements on nearly all employees. Those agreements typically barred workers from taking pest-control jobs for two years after leaving Rollins, the agency said.
According to the FTC's description of its complaint, the agreements also restricted pest-control work within a predetermined distance, typically a 75-mile radius from one of Rollins' more than 700 U.S. locations.
The final order requires Rollins to stop enforcing the noncompetes against current and former workers. It also requires the company to notify workers that they are no longer bound by a noncompete and may compete against Rollins, including by starting their own business.
The Commission approved the final order in a 2-0 vote after a public comment period. The supplied record is an FTC press release, not a court decision, so there is no judicial holding or reasoning to summarize from the available source spans.
For competition lawyers, the matter is another agency labor-market enforcement action using antitrust and unfair-competition tools against employment restrictions. The next source-check should be the final consent order and complaint to verify the order's operative terms and the FTC's full legal theory.