Salary History Ban
Quick Definition
A salary history ban is a state or local law that restricts an employer from asking a job candidate about their current or past compensation, or from relying on that information — however obtained — to decide whether to make an offer or how much to pay.
What Is Salary History Ban?
A salary history ban is a distinct category of employment law, separate from pay transparency requirements, that targets one specific practice: using a candidate's prior compensation as an input into a new hiring or pay decision. More than 20 US states, along with numerous cities and counties, now restrict salary history inquiries in some form, making it one of the more geographically widespread state-level hiring compliance requirements currently in effect.
The policy logic is straightforward. If a candidate was underpaid in a previous role — whether due to a prior employer's pay practices or a broader pattern of pay inequity — and a new employer anchors its offer to that prior figure, the underpayment carries forward into the new role rather than being corrected. Salary history bans are frequently framed in legislative history as a direct pay equity intervention, aimed at breaking this compounding effect rather than simply increasing transparency.
The specific scope of what's restricted varies by jurisdiction. Most laws prohibit asking a candidate directly about prior pay; some extend the restriction to obtaining the information through a background check, a former employer, or public records; and a smaller number specifically prohibit screening out a candidate who declines to answer. A policy that only stops recruiters from asking the question out loud can still leave a real compliance gap in a jurisdiction that separately restricts relying on salary history a candidate volunteers unprompted.
In practice, the most common compliance gap isn't a deliberate violation — it's a legacy applicant tracking system field, a standard phone screen script, or a habitual recruiter question that predates the relevant ban and was never updated once the law took effect. Auditing intake forms and screening scripts for lingering salary history questions is a concrete first step most multi-state employers haven't recently completed.
Why Salary History Ban Matters
Salary history bans directly affect how offers get built — a recruiting process anchored to what a candidate used to make, rather than what the role is actually worth, is both a compliance risk in more than 20 states and a practice that perpetuates pay inequity the moment it's applied.
Key Benefits
- Reduces legal exposure from a practice now restricted in more than 20 states and numerous cities
- Forces compensation decisions to be grounded in role-based market data rather than an individual candidate's negotiating history
- Helps correct, rather than compound, existing pay disparities tied to gender, race, or prior employer
- Removes a common source of candidate distrust — being asked to disclose pay before an offer is on the table
- Simplifies training for recruiters operating across multiple states when paired with a single company-wide policy
- Reduces the risk that a single ATS field or script becomes a systemic, hard-to-spot compliance failure