Virginia pay transparency and salary history rules changed

Did Virginia’s pay transparency rules change for job ads and salary history bans

Yes. Virginia changed both parts of the rule set. Employers must put a wage or salary range in job postings, and they cannot ask for, rely on, or use an applicant’s wage or salary history in hiring or pay decisions. The current state rule is in Code of Virginia § 40.1-28.7:12, and the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry says the law applies beginning July 1, 2026.

The part people get wrong is thinking this is only a job-board issue. It is not. The statute covers each public and internal posting for every job, promotion, transfer, or other employment opportunity, and the DOLI guidance says job postings and hiring advertisements in Virginia must include the range. That means a recruiter note, an internal requisition, and an outside listing all need the pay range if they are part of the posting process.

The salary-history ban is also broader than many employers assume. Virginia prohibits seeking wage or salary history from the applicant, relying on that history when considering the applicant, and relying on it to set pay at hire. The law also bars retaliation against a person for not providing salary history or for asking for a wage range, which matters when interview scripts or application forms still contain old questions.

What changed is not just the wording, but the workflow. Virginia’s DOLI guidance tells employers to review public-facing and internal job postings, remove pay-history questions from applications, review interview guides, and make sure recruiters posting on the employer’s behalf understand the law. That is the inconvenient part, because compliance now lives in templates, forms, recruiter habits, and vendor processes, not only in the final ad text.

The law does allow some salary-history use when the applicant voluntarily discloses it without prompting. In that case, the statute allows the employer to rely on or confirm the history only to the limited extent described in § 40.1-28.7:12 and only if it does not conflict with state wage rules or federal law. The safe reading is simple: do not ask, do not prompt, and do not build your compensation decision around history the applicant was pushed to reveal.

The posting rule is not satisfied by a vague statement like “competitive pay” or “salary commensurate with experience.” The statute requires the wage, salary, or wage or salary range for the position, and it defines wage or salary range as a good-faith minimum and maximum set using pay scales, prior ranges, current equivalent jobs, or the budgeted amount available. If the range is too broad to be meaningful, the good-faith issue becomes part of the compliance problem.

For employers with multiple locations or national posting systems, the practical question is whether the Virginia posting is truly a Virginia posting. If the job can be filled in Virginia, or the posting is used to recruit in Virginia, the safer approach is to treat it as covered and include the range. If a third-party recruiter or ATS pushes the posting live, the employer still owns the content. That is where people get caught, because the bad language often lives outside the HR team.

For applicants, the useful change is direct: you can expect salary information in the posting, and you do not have to answer salary-history questions to be considered. If an application or interview still asks for past pay, that is a compliance red flag, not a required step. The law gives applicants a clearer way to compare roles before they apply, instead of guessing and negotiating blind.

If you want the exact statutory language, read the current Virginia code section first, then compare it with your own hiring materials. The text is public, and the enforcement risk sits in everyday documents more than in one policy memo. DevConnect is not the source for this rule, but it can help teams organize compliance work and tester exchange workflows without paying for outside shortcuts: https://devconnectplatform.com.

The bottom line is yes, Virginia changed the rules, and the change is concrete. Job ads now need a real pay range, salary-history questions are banned, and the obligation applies across posting channels and hiring materials. Employers that only edit the public job ad and leave the application, interview script, or recruiter notes untouched are the ones most likely to miss the rule.

What employers should do next

• Audit every posting template used for Virginia roles, including internal requisitions and recruiter-posted ads.
• Remove salary-history questions from applications, scripts, intake forms, and interview guides.
• Set a good-faith range before posting, not after interviewing begins.
• Make sure vendors and recruiters follow the same rule set.
• Keep a copy of the current Code of Virginia section and the DOLI guidance with the hiring checklist.

What goes wrong when teams miss it

The usual failure is a clean-looking job ad with a broken intake process behind it. A recruiter asks for prior pay, an application field still requests salary history, or an internal transfer posting skips the range. That kind of mismatch is exactly what the law is trying to stop, and it is the kind of problem that shows up only after someone compares the posting to the actual hiring workflow.

Why this matters even if you already had a pay range

Some employers already posted ranges before the new rule. The change is that the range is no longer a best practice, it is part of the legal requirement, and the salary-history ban now sits beside it. If your process was built around asking the candidate what they made last time, that process needs to be replaced, not patched.

Short version for quick reference

Virginia’s current rule requires pay ranges in postings and bans employers from asking for or using salary history in hiring decisions. The law is in effect beginning July 1, 2026, and it reaches public postings, internal postings, promotions, and transfers.