From a lawmaking perspective, it can be construed as "we looked at the issue, and found low-level employees to be worthy of protection, but nobody else."
> The article also specifies that laid-off workers are exempt.
Even in states where non-competes are generally enforceable, courts are often reluctant to enforce them against laid-off employees.
But guess what? Big corporations have little interest in enforcing non-competes against poorly performing employees.
Take a look at the article I linked elsewhere, to see what type of employees Amazon chooses to selectively target for non-compete violations. They are the well-performing employees who jumped ship for a better opportunity elsewhere. Their goal is to discourage this behavior, so they don't risk losing their best employees or (heavens forbid!) paying them their market value.
I don't know of a single case where they sued a poorly-performing, fired, or laid off employee.