Not all true. This was my entire life for a long time because I did a lot of consulting and contracting in Washington.
In Washington it's actually a lot more complicated than just one law; in Washington state - because of things like the equal opportunity act, The laws on who owns what IP based on ownership of hardware hardware used (The company doesn't always clearly own the IP for your code made as a work product if you own the hardware it was created on, this is why every big tech company in Washington and California will generally issue you a laptop if you're a tech worker it's not just to make sure that you have something to work on it's also to make sure that there's a chain of ownership that they can call on in order to own the final work product of your output) and other things, they're just generally considered illegal/unenforceable, and while they do technically exist, having them actually be enforceable is the tricky and hard part that most companies can never make stick, Especially since the courts are generally finding any agreement that doesn't cover the employees needs with garden leave as simply unenforceable.
I've talked to several lawyers about this because I was in a tricky situation at one time I needed to learn all about this, and I was literally told that these kind of things happen all the time and it's mostly just companies blustering and threatening people with non competes that will never ever ever ever ever be seen by the court as legitimate because they were not being paid during that time (Garden leave is a strict requirement in WA for non-competes to be considered legit, even if they fire you, So if they say you cant compete with them for 18 months and cant work anywhere else, that's a lie, your allowed to work, your allowed to feed yourself, if they don't pay you garden leave for the duration of your non compete, then it's not enforceable)
In Washington state asking somebody to do a non compete is a great way to have them tell you that don't ever want to work for you; But there is also section C of the actual law at https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/def... to worry about, as it sets up companies for large sudden payout risks if they try that, especially at scale, since a non-compete is not actually enforceable in WA if they have to lay off somebody and can't pay them for the entire length of the non compete for garden leave.
Needless to say it's not as cut and dry as one single law and if you're saying that non competes are legal in Washington then I would say that I have never ever seen one be actually enforceable, and the few cases that my lawyer has said that they were enforceable were specific special cases where the person was getting garden leave in full because otherwise the courts generally find that non competes are not enforceable in Washington if the company is not paying garden leave for the full duration.