Salary History Ban States: Where You Cannot Ask

The first time this nearly caught me out, the question was not in an interview. It was field seven on an application form somebody had built two years earlier and nobody had looked at since. Current salary, optional, sitting quietly under phone number.

That is how most small employers break these laws. Not through a deliberate negotiating tactic, but through a form field, a recruiter who asks on your behalf, or a reference call where somebody confirms a number you were never allowed to seek. The rule is easy to follow once you know it exists. The hard part is finding every place your process still asks.

This covers which states and cities restrict the question, exactly what each one prohibits, what you may still ask instead, and how to take the question out of your hiring process for good. I build the people and hiring records tooling for businesses without an HR department at FirstHR, and FirstHR is an onboarding and HR platform rather than a payroll provider. This is general information, not legal advice.

What the Ban Actually Covers

A salary history ban prohibits an employer from seeking a candidate's current or prior compensation, and in most states from relying on that figure to decide whether to hire or what to pay. It does not stop you asking what somebody is looking for.

The statutes reach four distinct behaviors, and confusing them is the single most common reason an employer thinks it is compliant when it is not.

The wording differs in ways that matter. Washington's law bars an employer from seeking wage history from the applicant or a current or former employer, and from requiring that prior pay meet certain criteria (RCW 49.58.100). California splits the two behaviors into separate subsections: an employer shall not rely on salary history to decide whether to offer employment or what salary to offer, and shall not seek it orally or in writing, personally or through an agent (Labor Code 432.3).

States That Ban the Question for Private Employers

Eighteen states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico restrict pay history questions for private employers. The table below sets out when each took effect, what it prohibits, and what happens if the candidate offers the number without being asked.

Virginia is the newest entry and the one worth diarizing. From July 1, 2026 employers may not seek wage or salary history from an applicant, a former employer, or a third party service during the application or interview process, and may not rely on it in considering the candidate or setting pay (Virginia Department of Labor and Industry). The same statute requires a wage range in job postings, which is covered in more depth in the guide to pay transparency laws.

States Where Only Government Hiring Is Covered

Two states restrict pay history questions for their own agencies and leave private employers alone: North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Both did it by executive action rather than statute, which is how several of the private employer bans started as well.

The bottom four rows are the pattern to watch. In each case a governor restricted the question for state hiring first, and the legislature extended it to everybody a year or two later. If you operate in North Carolina or Pennsylvania, the public sector rule is a reasonable early warning rather than a permanent boundary.

Cities and Counties With Their Own Rules

A dozen local governments restrict pay history questions for private employers, and several sit in states with no statewide ban at all. Ohio is the clearest example: four cities regulate the question and the state does not.

A second group restricts the question only for the local government as an employer, which matters if you contract with them but not otherwise. That list includes Atlanta, Chicago, Louisville, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, Jackson, Columbia and Richland County in South Carolina, Montgomery County in Maryland, and St. Louis.

Two States That Ban the Bans

Michigan and Wisconsin went the opposite direction. Both passed preemption laws in 2018 stopping local governments from restricting what employers may ask job applicants, which means no Michigan or Wisconsin city can adopt a salary history ban.

Michigan's Public Act 84 prevents a local body from adopting or enforcing any ordinance regulating the information an employer may request or require on an application or during an interview. Wisconsin's measure declares the subject a matter of statewide concern and forecloses local rules the same way.

Neither law obliges you to ask. If you hire in more than one state, the sensible response is still to drop the question everywhere, because the compliance saving from asking it in Michigan is nil and the risk from asking it in the wrong place is not.

What You Can Still Ask

You can ask what a candidate expects to earn. Every one of these laws distinguishes prior compensation, which is restricted, from expected compensation, which is not. Delaware, Illinois and Nevada say so in the statute itself, and Colorado and Oregon say so in the guidance their enforcing agencies publish.

The strongest version of the compliant question is not a question at all. Open with your number: this role pays within a defined range, does that work for you. It keeps you clear of the statute, ends mismatched conversations in the first five minutes, and anchors the discussion on the job rather than on what the person happened to accept somewhere else.

That only works if you have a range before the first call. Employers who set pay reactively, one offer at a time, find the ban genuinely difficult because the old salary was doing the work a salary band should have been doing. Building a compensation range for each role in advance is the fix, and it pays for itself in offer speed alone.

If a Candidate Volunteers the Number

A voluntary, unprompted disclosure is not a violation by you. What you may then do with it varies by state, and the safest answer in every state is nothing at all.

The reason to ignore a volunteered figure even where the law allows you to use it is evidentiary. If a candidate later argues the offer was built on their previous underpayment, the only useful defense is a record showing the range, the level, and the reasoning. A number that entered the conversation from the candidate's side does not help that record. It complicates it.

Train interviewers on one sentence for this moment. Something like: I appreciate that, but we set pay from the range for the role, so let me tell you what that is. It is polite, it is fast, and it puts the conversation back where the statute wants it.

Rewriting the Hiring Process So the Question Never Gets Asked

Compliance here is a process change, not a policy document. Seven steps remove the question from the places it actually lives.

The interview script is the step employers skip and the one that fails first. Managers who have hired for a decade ask about current pay reflexively because it was always the fastest route to an offer somebody would accept. A structured interview with a fixed set of questions removes the improvisation that produces the slip.

Where the Question Hides After You Think You Removed It

Removing the application field takes ten minutes. Four other places keep asking long after the form is clean, and each one has produced real enforcement activity.

The reference call deserves particular attention because it feels harmless. You are verifying employment, not negotiating, and the former employer volunteers the figure without being asked. The statutes do not care about your intent. Most of them bar seeking the information from a current or former employer in plain terms, and a question that produces it is seeking it.

Your hiring process documentation is where these fixes have to live. A rule that exists only in the head of whoever set it up survives exactly as long as that person stays in the role.

Enforcement and What It Costs

Penalties vary widely, several are per candidate rather than per company, and a growing number of these statutes give the individual a direct right to sue and recover legal fees.

New Jersey sets civil penalties of up to $1,000 for a first violation, $5,000 for a second, and $10,000 for each subsequent one, collectible in a summary proceeding by the Commissioner of Labor and Workforce Development. The District of Columbia escalates the same way: $1,000 for a first violation, $5,000 for a second, and $20,000 for each one after that, enforced by the attorney general.

Cleveland took a softer approach at the front end, giving an employer ninety days after a complaint is filed to correct the process and commit to no further violations. Its civil penalties then reach $1,000 with no prior violations, $2,500 with one, and $5,000 with two or more in the preceding five years. Virginia adds attorney general enforcement plus a private right of action from July 1, 2026, with statutory damages of $1,000 to $10,000 or actual damages if greater. Washington routes violations through the existing remedies in its equal pay statute, which include damages, interest and costs.

The exposure that actually worries me is not the fine. It is the discovery position. An employer that asked about prior pay and then set an offer below its own range has handed a claimant the argument in a pay equity dispute, and that case costs more than any of the numbers above.

Does It Change What People Get Paid?

The measured effect is real and larger than most employers expect. Research from the Technology and Policy Research Initiative at Boston University School of Law compared workers and employers in covered counties against comparable ones outside, and found meaningful pay increases for people changing jobs under a ban.

Job changers in covered areas earned roughly 5 percent more than comparable workers elsewhere, on top of the raise people typically get when switching employers. Women earned about 8 percent more and Black workers about 13 percent more (Boston University, 2020). The same researchers observed a sharp rise in employers posting pay ranges once the question was unavailable, which is the mechanism connecting these laws to transparency rules.

For a small employer the honest reading is mixed. Losing the anchor of somebody's previous salary can raise what you pay for the same hire. It also removes the quiet path by which an underpaid candidate gets underpaid again, and it forces the internal discipline of knowing what a role is worth before you advertise it. That discipline is worth having regardless of which state you are in.

Where Small Employers Get This Wrong

Five patterns, and the first is the one I nearly made myself.

Cleaning the interview and forgetting the form is first. The interview is where people expect the risk, and the application field is where the violation usually sits, often marked optional and inherited from a template nobody wrote.

Assuming your state rules are the only ones that matter is second. The law follows the work location, so a single remote hire can pull a business into a jurisdiction it has never operated in.

Letting an agency ask on your behalf is third. Agents are covered almost everywhere, and Massachusetts names recruiters directly. If it is not in the engagement terms, it is not controlled.

Using a volunteered number because a lawyer said you could is fourth. It is often lawful and it is rarely wise, because it puts a figure into the offer file that you would prefer not to explain later.

And treating the ban as a paperwork exercise is last. If you have no range for the role, taking away the old salary leaves you with nothing to price against, which is why these laws are so much easier for employers who already have a compensation plan.

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