> 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."

I think a political perspective is probably more relevant/accurate which would likely be along the lines of "we looked at the issue, and protecting low-level employees is the most we could do and still get the bill passed"

Obviously large employers have vested interests in protecting non-competes and also have the lobbying budgets to successfully oppose the passage of stronger individual protection from non-competes