Virginia employers have been here before. Beginning in 2020, the General Assembly enacted a broad package of employee-protection laws that materially changed the Commonwealth’s employment law landscape, including stronger wage-payment remedies, restrictions on noncompete agreements, expanded discrimination protections, pregnancy accommodation requirements, and private-sector whistleblower protections. The following year, Virginia added the Virginia Overtime Wage Act, requiring many employers to revisit wage-and-hour classifications and overtime practices. More recently, the General Assembly has continued to narrow employers’ use of restrictive covenants.

That trend continued in 2026, with Virginia’s new pay transparency law, which took effect July 1, 2026. The law does more than require employers to disclose compensation information in job postings. It also restricts employer inquiries into wage and salary history, limits how employers can use voluntarily disclosed pay history, creates specific anti-retaliation protections, and provides both public and private enforcement mechanisms.

What Is Pay Transparency?

Virginia has now joined a growing number of states and localities that require some form of pay transparency. For employers operating in multiple jurisdictions, be aware that coverage thresholds, required disclosures, salary-history restrictions, enforcement mechanisms, and cure rights vary significantly from one jurisdiction to another.

At its core, pay transparency is designed to give applicants and employees more information about the compensation attached to a job. Depending on the jurisdiction, pay transparency laws may require employers to disclose wage or salary ranges in job postings, provide pay information upon request, or disclose benefits and other forms of compensation. Salary-history bans serve a related purpose. When an employer bases a new hire’s compensation on what the applicant earned in a prior job, earlier pay disparities can carry from one employer to the next. Virginia’s new law combines both approaches: it limits the collection and use of an applicant’s prior pay information and requires wage or salary information in public and internal job postings.

What the New Law Requires of Virginia Employers

Virginia’s new law has two core compliance components. First, it restricts how employers may seek and use wage or salary history. Second, it requires employers to disclose compensation information in public and internal job postings. The new provision does not impose a minimum employee-count threshold. The law prohibits Virginia employers from seeking the wage or salary history of a prospective employee. “Wage or salary history” means the wage or salary paid to the prospective employee by the individual’s current or previous employer. Employers also may not rely on that history when deciding whether to consider an applicant for employment or, subject to a narrow exception, when determining the applicant’s wages or salary upon hire.

The exception is narrow. If a prospective employee voluntarily provides wage or salary history without prompting by the employer, the employer may rely on or confirm that information only to support compensation that is higher than the employer’s initial offer. Even then, the higher compensation may not violate Virginia’s equal-pay law or federal law. (law.lis.virginia.gov)

The new law’s anti-retaliation provision protects an applicant or current employee who declines to provide wage or salary history or asks an employer for the wage or salary range for a position. An employer may not respond to either action by refusing to interview, hire, employ, or promote the individual, or by taking some other retaliatory action. In practical terms, recruiters and managers should not treat a request for a pay range -- or a refusal to disclose prior pay -- as a negative factor in an employment decision.

The Virginia pay transparency law’s posting requirement is equally important. Employers must disclose the wage, salary, or wage or salary range in each public and internal posting for each job, promotion, transfer, or other employment opportunity. The new law, therefore, reaches well beyond external recruiting. Internal promotion and transfer opportunities are covered as well.

The law defines a “wage or salary range” as the minimum and maximum wage or salary for the position, set in good faith by reference to an applicable pay scale, a previously determined wage or salary range for the position, the actual range paid to employees holding equivalent positions, or the budgeted amount available for the position. The statute specifically directs that the breadth of the range be considered when evaluating good faith. Virginia employers should not assume that an artificially wide range will satisfy the law simply because it includes a minimum and maximum.

Virginia’s new law does not expressly require employers to include a description of benefits in job postings. That distinction matters for multistate employers because other jurisdictions impose broader disclosure requirements.

Enforcement and the Limited Cure Period

The Virginia pay transparency law includes both public and private enforcement mechanisms. The Office of the Attorney General may bring a civil action to enforce the statute, with civil penalties for a violation reaching up to $1,000 for a first violation and up to $5,000 for a subsequent violation. A court may also award other legal or equitable relief it deems appropriate.

An aggrieved prospective employee or employee also has a private action that must be filed within one year after the individual’s rights under the statute were violated. A prevailing employee in a private right of action may recover actual damages and other legal or equitable relief that the court deems appropriate.

Importantly, the new pay transparency law provides employers with a limited notice-and-cure mechanism for two types of posting violations: failing to disclose the required compensation information and failing to set a wage or salary range in good faith. Any person may provide written notice of an alleged posting violation. However, if the employer corrects the posting in the original posting locations within fifteen business days after receiving the notice, no action may be brought for that posting violation. The cure provision does not extend to prohibited salary-history inquiries or use, or to retaliation. While the cure period is useful, employers should not treat it as a compliance strategy. Once a noncompliant posting has circulated, it may have been reposted by third-party recruiters, scraped by job boards, or shared internally. Employers are better served by getting job postings right before they go live.

What Virginia Employers Should Be Thinking About Now

Virginia employers should already be well underway with compliance, particularly businesses that use multiple job boards, decentralized recruiting, outside recruiters, or business-unit-specific promotion practices.

First, employers should review application materials, recruiter scripts, interview guides, reference and background-check processes, and instructions to outside recruiters to eliminate requests for prior wage or salary history. Human resources personnel, managers, and recruiters should be trained not to ask compensation-history questions, even informally.

Second, employers should train the same decision-makers on the law’s anti-retaliation rule. An applicant’s refusal to disclose wage or salary history and an applicant’s or employee’s request for a wage or salary range are protected by the statute. Those actions should not influence interviewing, hiring, promotion, or other employment decisions.

Third, employers should develop a consistent process for setting compensation ranges before positions are posted. The process should tie each range to one or more of the statutory reference points: an applicable pay scale, a previously determined range for the position, the actual range paid to employees in equivalent positions, or the amount budgeted for the position. Employers may use market data to inform those benchmarks, but they should document the business basis for the range they ultimately publish.

Internal job postings deserve particular attention. Many employers understandably focus compliance efforts on external recruiting, but Virginia’s law also applies to promotions, transfers, and other employment opportunities. Employers should review intranet postings, email announcements, internal mobility platforms, and similar communications to ensure that required compensation information is included. Multistate employers also should not assume that a national template will work everywhere. Virginia’s law has its own definitions, remedies, and cure procedure. A posting that complies with the law of another state may not satisfy Virginia’s requirements, and a Virginia-compliant posting may omit information required elsewhere.

Finally, employers should coordinate pay-transparency compliance with a broader pay-equity review. Publishing compensation ranges can expose inconsistencies that previously remained internal. If current employees see public or internal postings with ranges above their own compensation, employers should be prepared to identify and document legitimate, nondiscriminatory business reasons for those differences.

Virginia’s new pay transparency law is more than a job-posting requirement. It changes the information employers may seek and use during hiring, protects applicants and employees who ask for pay ranges or decline to provide prior pay information, and creates new enforcement and litigation exposure. Employers that treat the new law as merely a narrow recruiting-template issue may miss the broader risk. The better approach is to align job postings, hiring practices, compensation-setting procedures, manager training, and pay-equity review.

If you have questions about Virginia’s new pay transparency requirements or need assistance reviewing your hiring, compensation, or posting practices, please contact Doug Taylor at (703) 526-5586 or rdougtaylor@beankinney.com, or your current Bean Kinney attorney.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. If you have questions about how these laws apply to your business, consulting counsel early is strongly recommended.