Every job posting a Virginia employer publishes now must include a number. As of July 1, 2026, Virginia Code § 40.1-28.7:12 requires employers to disclose a wage, salary, or good-faith pay range in every public and internal posting — and it bars them from asking applicants what they earned at their last job.
The law applies to every employer in the Commonwealth. There is no headcount threshold, no revenue floor, and no grandfathering for existing listings. If you have an open req sitting on a careers page without a pay figure, you are out of compliance today.
Here is what the statute actually says, where the real exposure sits, and what to fix first.
What the law requires
The new section, added by Senate Bill 215 and House Bill 636 and signed on April 22, 2026, creates six separate prohibitions. An employer may not:
- Seek the wage or salary history of a prospective employee;
- Rely on that history when considering the person for employment;
- Rely on that history when setting the pay the person will receive on hire, subject to one narrow exception discussed below;
- Refuse to interview, hire, employ, or promote — or otherwise retaliate against — a prospective or current employee for declining to provide pay history or for asking what a role pays;
- Fail or refuse to disclose, in each public and internal posting for each job, promotion, transfer, or other employment opportunity, the wage, salary, or wage or salary range for the position; or
- Fail to set that range in good faith.
Items 1 through 4 are the salary history ban. Items 5 and 6 are the posting requirement. They carry very different consequences, and the difference decides how you should spend your compliance budget.
What counts as a “wage or salary range”
The statute defines it as the minimum and maximum wage or salary for the position, set in good faith by reference to one of four anchors:
- an applicable pay scale
- a previously determined range for that position
- the actual range of pay for people currently holding equivalent positions
- the budgeted amount available for the position
That definition is your compliance blueprint. Good faith is not a vibe. It is a documentation exercise. If you can point to the comp band, the prior posting, the incumbents’ actual pay, or the approved budget line, you have a defensible range. If your range came from nowhere, you have a problem.
The statute also directs that any analysis of good faith shall consider, among other things, the breadth of the range. A $35,000-to-$150,000 posting technically discloses a range. Whether it survives a good-faith challenge is a different question. Keep bands tight enough that you could justify them to a judge in one sentence.
“Internal posting” is not a throwaway phrase
This is where careful employers slip. The disclosure duty attaches to each posting for each job, promotion, transfer, or other employment opportunity — public and internal.
That means:
- The promotion opportunity you announce on Slack needs a range.
- The lateral transfer you post on the intranet needs a range.
- The role you circulate only to current staff needs a range.
- The req your outside recruiter posts on your behalf needs a range.
If it is a posting and it is for an opportunity, it needs a number.
The salary history ban in practice
The prohibition is on asking about history — what a current or previous employer paid. It is not a prohibition on asking about expectations.
Off limits: “What’s your current salary?” · “What did you make at your last job?” · A “Current Compensation” field in your application · Instructing a recruiter to screen candidates by present pay · Asking a background-check or employment-verification vendor to return compensation data
Generally fine: “What are your salary expectations for this role?” · “Our posted range is $95,000 to $115,000 — does that work for you?” · Discussing the candidate’s expectations against your posted band
The one exception, and how narrow it is
If an applicant volunteers their pay history without any prompting, the employer may rely on it or confirm it — but only to support a wage higher than the employer’s initial offer, and only to the extent the higher figure does not violate § 40.1-28.6, Virginia’s equal-pay-irrespective-of-sex statute, or federal law.
Read that carefully. Voluntary disclosure is a one-way ratchet. It can move a candidate up. It can never be used to move them down, to justify offering below the posted range, or to decline an interview.
Common mistakes we are already seeing
The violations that will generate claims are not hiring managers going rogue. They are systems and habits nobody thought to audit.
The applicant tracking system still has a legacy field. “Desired Salary” is fine. “Current Salary” is a violation every time an applicant fills it in. Most systems ship with both, and most Virginia employers turned neither off.
The recruiter asks the wrong question. A third-party recruiter’s screening call is your liability. “What are you at now?” is the most common violation in the market, and it happens in conversations nobody records.
National employers forget internal postings. Multi-state companies fixed their public careers page in June and never touched the intranet. Internal promotion and transfer postings are squarely covered.
Remote roles go out without ranges. The statute does not say whether it reaches remote positions that could be performed in Virginia. That question is unresolved, and until a court answers it, a national posting open to Virginia residents is an unnecessary bet.
Verification vendors return compensation data. Standard employment-verification packages often include prior pay. If it lands in your file, you sought it.
The range is technically compliant and practically indefensible. A band wide enough to cover two pay grades invites a good-faith challenge the disclosure requirement was never meant to survive.
The cure gets applied to three of five channels. If the req went to your careers page, LinkedIn, Indeed, an aggregator, and a trade newsletter, fixing most of them is not a cure.
What happens if you get it wrong
Attorney General enforcement. The Attorney General may bring a civil action. Penalties run up to $1,000 for a first violation and up to $5,000 for each subsequent violation, paid into the general fund. The court may also award other legal and equitable relief.
Private lawsuits. An aggrieved prospective employee or employee may sue within one year of the violation and recover actual damages plus any other legal and equitable relief the court deems appropriate.
One clarification is worth flagging, because several published summaries get it wrong. Earlier drafts of the bill included statutory damages of $1,000 to $10,000 and an express attorney-fee award. Those provisions are not in the law that took effect. The enacted text provides for actual damages and any other legal and equitable relief as the court deems appropriate. If you are budgeting risk off a summary quoting a $10,000 statutory damages figure, you are working from a superseded draft.
The cure window, and its trap
Employers get one meaningful safety valve. Any person — not just an applicant, not just an employee — may send written notice that a posting fails to comply with the disclosure or good-faith-range requirements. If the employer corrects the posting on all original posting locations within 15 business days, no action for that violation may be brought.
Three things to understand about it.
The cure only covers the posting violations. It does nothing for a salary-history question, a retaliatory decision, or a refusal to interview. Those are actionable the moment they happen, with no do-over.
One notice covers everyone. The statute provides that written notice about a particular posting constitutes adequate notice for the duration of that posting as to any prospective employee seeking remedies under the section. A single email from one person starts the clock as to every applicant who saw that posting.
“All original posting locations” means all of them. Keep a distribution log for every posting so you can actually find them inside 15 business days.
How this becomes a lawsuit
Consider a Northern Virginia professional services firm hiring a controller.
The firm posts the role on its careers page and LinkedIn with no pay figure. Its budget for the position is $135,000. During a screening call, an outside recruiter asks each finalist what they are currently earning. The leading candidate answers $112,000. The firm offers $118,000 — a raise from her perspective, and well under budget. She accepts, then learns six weeks later that a peer hired the same quarter is at $134,000.
She sends the firm a written notice about the posting. The firm adds a range to both locations within 15 business days. That closes the posting exposure, for her and for everyone else who saw the listing.
It does not close anything else. The recruiter’s question violated the statute. So did setting her pay off the answer. Neither is curable, and both stay actionable for a year from the violation.
Notice where the fight actually is. It is not about whether the range was broad enough. It is about a question asked in an unrecorded phone call by a vendor, and an offer number that now has to be explained without reference to what she used to make. The firm’s best evidence would have been a documented band and an offer-approval file showing prior pay was never an input. It has neither.
That is the shape of the first wave of these claims.
What you should do now
If you are a Virginia employer:
✓ Add a wage, salary, or good-faith range to every open posting, public and internal, today
✓ Document the basis for each range: pay scale, prior range, incumbent pay, or budget
✓ Delete every current or prior compensation field from applications and your applicant tracking system
✓ Rewrite interview guides and recruiter scripts to ask about expectations, never history
✓ Put the same restriction in writing with every outside recruiting agency you use
✓ Confirm your background-check and verification vendors do not return wage data
✓ Remove prior pay as an input from offer-approval workflows
✓ Keep a posting distribution log so you can cure across every channel in 15 business days
✓ Route any written compliance notice to one owner with a calendared deadline
✓ Include ranges on remote postings open to Virginia residents
Bottom line
The posting requirement is the easy part. It is a form change, and there is a cure window if you miss one. The salary history ban is where the durable risk lives, because it turns on what individual people say in real conversations, it has no cure provision, and it stays actionable for a year.
Fix the postings this week. Then fix the process.
McClanahan Powers advises Virginia businesses on employment agreements, contracts, and the disputes that follow, in Virginia state courts and the Eastern District of Virginia. If you are hiring in Virginia and are not certain your postings, applications, and offer process hold up, send us your posting template and application form and we can tell you where you stand.
Contact McClanahan Powers today.
Frequently asked questions
Does the Virginia pay transparency law apply to small businesses?
Yes. The statute contains no employer-size threshold. A company with three employees has the same posting and salary-history obligations as one with three thousand.
Do I have to post a range, or can I post a single number?
Either. The statute requires disclosure of the wage, salary, or wage or salary range. If the position pays a fixed rate, disclose the rate. If it pays within a band, disclose the minimum and maximum, set in good faith.
Can I still ask a candidate what salary they are looking for?
Yes. The prohibition targets what a current or former employer paid, not what the candidate wants going forward. Train your team on the distinction, because the two questions blur easily in conversation.
What if an applicant tells me their current salary without being asked?
You may use or confirm it only to support a wage higher than your initial offer, and only if the higher figure does not violate § 40.1-28.6 or federal law. You may never use volunteered history to reduce an offer, pay below the posted range, or decline an interview.
Can employers still negotiate salary?
Yes. The statute expressly preserves an applicant’s ability to disclose pay information voluntarily, including for the purpose of negotiating after an initial offer that includes compensation. What changes is the starting point. You open from a disclosed, good-faith range rather than from what the candidate used to earn.
How do I post a range for a commission or bonus-heavy role?
The statute requires disclosure of the wage or salary range and does not separately define how variable compensation is treated. The conservative approach is to disclose the base wage or salary range as required and describe commission or bonus opportunity alongside it, rather than blending a projected total into a single number that no anchor in the statute supports.
Does this apply to remote roles posted nationally?
The statute does not address whether it reaches remote positions that could be performed in Virginia. That question is unresolved. Employers hiring for remote roles open to Virginia residents should assume it applies.
Does it apply to independent contractors?
The statute’s prohibitions run to prospective employees and employees. It does not by its terms reach independent contractor engagements. But misclassification is its own exposure, and a worker you treat as a contractor may not be one. Do not use contractor status as a workaround.
What about applicants who live outside Virginia?
The statute does not spell out its geographic reach. For a Virginia-based position, assume it applies regardless of where the applicant lives. For a position based elsewhere, the analysis is less clear and depends on facts worth reviewing with counsel.
Can I change a posted range after the posting goes up?
Nothing in the statute freezes a range. But changing one mid-search invites a good-faith challenge, particularly if the change follows a candidate’s disclosure or a negotiation. Document the business reason before you change it.
How long does an applicant have to sue?
One year from the date the rights under the statute were violated. For posting violations only, the employer can defeat the claim by correcting the posting within 15 business days of written notice.
Read more
- Virginia Non-Compete Agreements After July 1, 2026
- Business Services
- Contracts
- Lawsuits and Disputes
This article is general information about Virginia law and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.