Legal Question in Business Law in Colorado

Re: Employment non-compete clause legal in Colorado?

Non-competes are presumptively invalid in Colorado unless they fit into one of 4 permissible categories: 1) part of the purchase and sale of a business; 2) designed to recover costs of training an employee whose employment with the employer lasted less than 2 years; 3) applies to executive or management personnel or officers and employees who are professional staff to execs/management; or 4) to protect trade secrets. I don't see your independent contractor status fitting into any of these categories - maybe trade secrets if you're dealing with those, but that category is very narrow - in fact I think by trying to do this, the principal runs the risk of turning you into an employee rather than an independent contractor - shouldn't be able to remove the "independent" part. Likely to be unenforceable.