Minnesota Banned Noncompetes in 2023. A Duluth DPC Doctor Is in Court Because Hers Was Signed in 2013.

Nyasha Spears signed her employment contract with St. Luke’s in Duluth in October 2013. Minnesota banned most noncompete agreements ten years after that, and the gap between those two dates is why she is still in court.

Spears opened Amity Creek Primary Care in April, a direct primary care practice in Duluth’s Lakeside neighborhood. Her former employer, the Wisconsin-based system Aspirus, has been trying to stop her. A district judge ruled in her favor in February. Aspirus appealed. Writing for the Minnesota Star-Tribune, columnist Aaron Brown reports that the appeal hearing is set for Oct. 8 and that the case has already cost Spears $300,000 in legal fees. Aspirus declined to comment on the pending litigation.

If you are a physician weighing a move out of employment, this is the case to read.

The contract had a radius and a clock

Spears was hired as a family physician at St. Luke’s P.S. Rudie Medical Clinic in downtown Duluth in October 2013, according to the Duluth News Tribune. Her agreement barred her from work similar to her hired position within 25 miles of a facility where she had worked, for up to two years after leaving.

The contract set that radius from any of the system’s medical offices where she kept up regular services in the year before she left.

Then the clinic closed. Aspirus told physicians on Feb. 6, 2025 that the P.S. Rudie clinic would shut on March 17, about five weeks later. Court filings reported by the News Tribune say her contract required 180 days of notice.

Spears filed suit in Minnesota’s Sixth District Court on Oct. 26, 2025, a civil employment contract case against Aspirus St. Luke’s.

The 2023 law does not reach backward

Minnesota Statute 181.988 makes any covenant not to compete contained in an employment contract void and unenforceable. Gov. Tim Walz signed it on May 24, 2023, and it took effect July 1, 2023.

The statute applies only to contracts and agreements entered into on or after that date, as the Minnesota firm Fafinski Mark & Johnson explains. Anything signed before July 1, 2023 is still judged the old way, under common-law questions about whether the restriction was reasonable in scope, duration and geography.

So a physician who signed in 2024 walks. A physician who signed in 2013 litigates.

That split lands hard in medicine, because the date on the signature page decides which test a court applies. A doctor who has been in one system since residency is probably sitting on a pre-2023 agreement without knowing the date matters.

A judge weighed the contract against a shortage

Judge Shawn Reed granted a temporary injunction on Feb. 17, 2026, blocking Aspirus from enforcing the noncompete while the case proceeds.

Reed found that Spears’ “harm is personal and immediate,” and that “she cannot start her own practice or continue her professional practice in the Duluth area if the non-compete is enforced,” according to the Minnesota Medical Association.

Then he went past her own situation. The court found that “the record reflects a documented shortage of primary care physicians in Minnesota” and that “limiting [Dr. Spears’] ability to practice locally would exacerbate an existing public health problem, in direct conflict with the public interest.”

That is the sentence with reach. A shortage finding turns one doctor’s contract dispute into a question about who gets a physician at all.

The practice she opened anyway

Amity Creek opened in April at 5931 E. Superior St., with Spears and Dr. Kristin Lusian. Brown reports it passed 200 patients by September.

The practice publishes its prices. Membership runs $40 a month for children up to 18, $90 for adults 19 to 39, $100 for adults 40 to 64 and $130 for adults 65 and up, according to the clinic’s member pricing page. Long-term care and assisted living residents pay $180. Labs are offered at wholesale with an $8 processing fee for members, and the practice does not bill insurance. Those are one clinic’s numbers, and DPC pricing varies by practice and location.

Spears told Brown who is actually walking in the door. “We’re serving primarily uninsured and underinsured people,” she said. “Carpenters and artists and waitresses and sandwich makers and entrepreneurs and people that own a welding company and a cleaning company, right? These are people who are the backbone of America who cannot get health care.”

She is also direct about the model’s limits. A family doctor can’t treat cancer or perform heart surgery, and members still need a plan for catastrophic illness.

The attorney general is already looking

Spears’ case sits inside a wider inquiry. The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office served Aspirus a subpoena on Oct. 16, 2025 seeking information about its noncompete agreements, after employee complaints, the Duluth News Tribune reported. Aspirus said it looked “forward to working closely with the attorney general’s office to clarify any misunderstanding.”

What To Watch

Oct. 8 is the next real signal. Aspirus is appealing the injunction that let Spears open, and Brown reports the fight has already cost her $300,000 in legal fees.

Watch two things beyond the ruling itself. The first is whether Reed’s public-interest reasoning survives the appeal. A shortage finding that holds up gives the next physician in this position something to cite, in Minnesota and anywhere else courts weigh access against contract. The second is the attorney general’s investigation, which is examining the same employer’s agreements from outside the courtroom and on its own timeline.

One practical thing you can do this week. If you signed before July 1, 2023, your noncompete is live law in Minnesota. Pull the contract and read the radius before you sign a lease.