A Springfield judge will be ruling on whether Missouri’s law allowing non-compete clauses should stand. Non-compete clauses are contractural arrangements in which an employee agrees not to work for a competitor for a certain amount of time after leaving the original employer. The Springfield case involves a surgeon, Edward Roeder, who left a clinic he’d been working for and began working at a hospital. The clinic says that violates a noncompete clause it had with Roeder. Roeder says he quit the clinic when the clinic tried to force him to work at another Springfield hospital against his wishes.