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 guide 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).

What Counts as Salary History

Salary history means what a candidate is paid now or was paid before, in every form the money arrives in. Base wage is the obvious part, and most of these statutes reach past it to bonuses, commissions, and equity, with Illinois and Hawaii naming benefits and other compensation alongside salary. A question about somebody's total package is the same question in a better suit.

One thing sits clearly outside the definition: what a candidate wants to earn in the new role is an expectation rather than a history, and Illinois writes that permission into the statute itself.

The structure of a current package, meaning whether the role carried a bonus or commission at all, is murkier territory. Several statutes reach any compensation information, so describing your own structure beats asking about theirs.

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. Since 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.

States Where Only Government Hiring Is Covered

Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania restrict pay history questions for their own agencies and leave private employers alone. All three did it by executive action rather than statute, which is how several of the private employer bans started as well. Michigan's version bars state departments from asking before a conditional offer (Executive Directive 2019-10).

The bottom four rows show the pattern. Each governor acted on state government first, and the legislature later extended a ban to every employer: within months in Illinois, two years later in New Jersey, three in New York, and seven in Virginia.

If you hire in Michigan, North Carolina, or Pennsylvania, treat the public sector rule as an early warning rather than a permanent boundary.

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Cities and Counties With Their Own Rules

At least ten 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's own hiring, so private employers in those cities are not covered unless a separate state or local rule reaches them. Two examples are Chicago, by mayoral executive order, and Louisville Metro, by ordinance.

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 (MCL 123.1384). The Wisconsin measure declares the subject a matter of statewide concern and forecloses local rules the same way (Wis. Stat. 103.36).

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 asking it in Michigan gains you nothing, while asking it in the wrong place can cost you.

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. California, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, and Nevada write that distinction into the statute, and Oregon's labor bureau confirms it in its published guidance (Oregon BOLI).

Colorado's labor division states the prohibition as asking about an applicant's pay history or relying on pay history to set a wage rate (Colorado Department of Labor and Employment), a list that never reaches what somebody wants to earn next.

Illinois draws the harder line on the other side of that boundary. Its agency describes the violation as the employer considering or relying on a prior pay figure the candidate disclosed voluntarily during the application process, so permission to talk about expectations never becomes permission to use a volunteered number (Illinois Department of Labor).

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.

Maryland, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Virginia draw the narrowest version of that permission. All four allow you to act on a volunteered figure only to support a wage higher than the one already offered, never to justify a lower one (Maryland Labor and Employment 3-304.2, Minnesota Statutes 363A.08).

The reason to ignore a volunteered figure even where the law allows you to use it comes down to proof. 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.

Step seven is the only one that leaves evidence, so it is the one worth a form. This is not a compensation worksheet: how the number itself was reasoned out belongs in whatever compensation decision record you already keep. What this one does is close the question the statute is actually about, by showing that pay history reached the file from none of the four directions it can arrive from. It takes about five minutes before the offer goes out, and if anybody ever argues the figure was built on the candidate's last salary, the answer is a document rather than a recollection.

Where the Question Hides After You Think You Removed It

Removing the application field takes ten minutes. The question keeps surviving in the four places below, including copies of the form you forgot existed, long after you think it is gone.

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.

Sweep all of them at once and write down what you found. The rows below are every surface I have seen the question survive on. Put a name and a date against each, and set the re-check for the next time you open a role, because vendor report layouts and inherited form templates both change without telling you.

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Kelly KapoorCustomer ServiceActive

Jim HalpertSales RepresentativeOn Leave

Departments

Dwight SchruteSales3 people

Darryl PhilbinWarehouse1 person

Kelly KapoorCustomer Service1 person

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Enforcement and What It Costs

Penalties vary widely, several climb with each repeat violation, 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 (P.L.2019, c.199).

The District of Columbia escalates the same way: civil fines of $1,000 for a first violation, $5,000 for a second, and $20,000 for each one after that, with the attorney general separately able to bring a civil action for restitution or injunctive relief, meaning repayment or a court order to stop the practice (D.C. Code 32-1455).

Cleveland took a softer approach at the front end. Once its Fair Employment Wage Board upholds a complaint, the employer has ninety days from receiving it to fix the process and commit to no further violations.

Civil penalties apply only after that window, capped at $1,000 with no prior violations, $2,500 with one, and $5,000 with two or more in the preceding five years, plus yearly inflation adjustments.

Virginia is the one to read closely, because the two routes carry different numbers. The attorney general can seek a civil penalty of up to $1,000 for a first violation and up to $5,000 for a subsequent one, while the candidate has one year to sue for actual damages and whatever other relief the court thinks fit (Va. Code 40.1-28.7:12).

Washington routes violations through the existing remedies in its equal pay statute: actual damages, plus statutory damages equal to the actual damages or $5,000, whichever is greater, one percent monthly interest, costs, and reasonable attorney fees (RCW 49.58.070).

The exposure that actually worries me is not the fine. It is the discovery position: what a claimant's lawyer can pull from your files once a lawsuit starts.

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?

Yes, the measured effect is real. 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 Boston University researchers also observed a sharp rise in job ads listing salary information 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 the Massachusetts attorney general names recruiters directly (Massachusetts AGO guidance). 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.

If you only do one thing after reading this, open your application form, delete any current salary field, and give every interviewer the one sentence that states the range for the role.

What worked for me

We stopped tracking which state each candidate was in and adopted one rule for everybody: nobody asks, and a volunteered number never enters the offer file. It took an afternoon to rewrite the forms and the screening script, and it removed an entire category of decision from managers who had better things to think about. The unexpected benefit was speed. Once every open role had a range attached before the first call, offers that used to take three days of internal debate took about twenty minutes, because the argument had already happened.

Nick Anisimov, FirstHR founder

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