If you hire in Virginia or Maine, your next job ad is a compliance document whether you like it or not. Virginia started requiring a good-faith pay range in every public and internal posting on July 1, 2026 — with no small-business exemption at all. Maine followed on July 29, 2026, covering every employer with 10 or more workers and adding a three-year pay-record rule on top. A posting that was perfectly legal in June can now trigger a private lawsuit in Virginia if you do not fix it within 15 business days of being told about the problem.
Here is what each law actually requires, where they differ, and the concrete steps to get your postings, applications, and payroll records compliant.
Virginia: HB 636 / SB 215, Effective July 1, 2026
Virginia's law (Va. Code Section 40.1-28.7:12) passed as identical bills HB 636 and SB 215, signed April 22, 2026. It does two things at once: mandates pay disclosure and bans salary-history inquiries.
Who is covered: basically everyone
Unlike most states, Virginia set no minimum headcount. The law applies broadly to any employer doing business in or operating within the Commonwealth that employs someone for wages, salaries, or commission. If you are a five-person company with one remote worker in Richmond, you are in scope.
What every posting must include
Each public and internal posting — for new hires, promotions, transfers, and other employment opportunities — must state either the specific wage or salary or a minimum and maximum pay range. The range must be established in good faith, meaning it should reflect the compensation you genuinely expect to pay for the role, not a placeholder span designed to satisfy the form while telling applicants nothing.
Internal mobility counts. A promotion announcement circulated only to current staff needs the range just as much as a LinkedIn ad does.
The salary-history ban
Virginia employers may not seek an applicant's wage or salary history, and may not rely on that history when making hiring decisions or setting pay — subject to narrow statutory exceptions. You also may not retaliate against an applicant or employee for refusing to provide pay history or for asking for the pay range. Practical consequence: strip salary-history questions out of every application form, interview script, and reference-check template now, because a single hiring manager asking "so what are you making currently?" creates liability.
How it is enforced: lawsuits, with a short cure window
The law creates a private right of action, so applicants can sue over violations. For the posting duties specifically — creating the range and putting it in job ads — there is a limited right to cure: the employer gets 15 business days to fix the violation before a suit can be brought. Treat any complaint about a missing range as a same-day emergency, not a ticket for next quarter's HR backlog.
Maine: LD 54, Effective July 29, 2026
Maine's law, LD 54, was passed by the legislature in April 2026 and signed by the governor on April 24. It joins neighboring Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont, which already had similar requirements.
Who is covered: 10 or more employees
Maine's threshold is 10 or more employees — low enough to catch the overwhelming majority of established small businesses. Count carefully: if headcount fluctuates seasonally, know where you stand before posting summer or holiday roles.
What every posting must include
Covered employers must include the prospective range of pay in any job posting — electronic or printed, posted directly or through a third party. That last point matters enormously: if a recruiter, staffing firm, or job-board aggregator posts your role without the range, the obligation is still yours. Audit every channel where your openings appear, not just your own careers page.
Internal postings for transfers and promotions are covered too. A "job posting" means a solicitation intended to recruit applicants for a specific position, including the qualifications for desired candidates.
There is one carve-out: commission-only positions need not include a range, but the posting must state that the position is commission-only.
What counts as the "range of pay"
Maine defines the range as the pay the employer anticipates relying on when setting wages for the position. You can ground it in any of the following:
- An applicable pay scale
- A previously established wage range for the position
- The actual wages paid to employees in equivalent positions
- The budgeted amount for the role
Pick the basis that fits, document which one you used, and keep the range honest. A range so wide it conveys nothing invites the same scrutiny as omitting it.
Disclosure on request and three-year recordkeeping
Beyond postings, employers must give the pay range to existing employees on request — so every job title needs a defensible range on file, not just the roles you happen to be hiring for. And employers must maintain a record of each position held by an employee along with that employee's pay history, retaining it for three years after employment ends. If your payroll records live in a shoebox of PDFs, this is the provision that will hurt.
The Two Laws Side by Side
| Question | Virginia | Maine |
|---|---|---|
| Effective date | July 1, 2026 | July 29, 2026 |
| Employer size threshold | None — any employer operating in VA | 10 or more employees |
| Range in public postings | Yes, good-faith wage/salary or range | Yes, prospective range |
| Range in internal postings | Yes, including promotions and transfers | Yes, including transfers and promotions |
| Third-party postings covered | Law applies broadly to employers; postings must carry the range wherever they appear | Explicitly yes — direct or third-party |
| Salary-history ban | Yes, with anti-retaliation protection | No separate history ban in this law |
| Benefits disclosure required | No | No |
| Recordkeeping | Standard posting duties | Position-by-position pay records kept 3 years post-employment |
| Enforcement | Private right of action; 15-business-day cure for posting violations | State enforcement framework with employer obligations |
Neither state requires benefits information in the posting — a meaningful difference from jurisdictions like Illinois or Washington, D.C., where benefits summaries are part of the package. If you already post in those places, do not assume your template satisfies Maine and Virginia, or vice versa.
The Remote-Posting Trap
Two features of these laws combine into a trap for small employers who think locally and hire remotely.
First, Virginia's coverage turns on doing business in the Commonwealth, not on where your headquarters sits. A remote-first company elsewhere that posts an opening visible to Virginia applicants should assume the posting must carry a range.
Second, Maine makes you responsible for how third parties present your openings. Aggregators routinely scrape and reformat job ads, sometimes dropping fields. If the version a candidate sees lacks the range, Maine will not accept "the job board stripped it" as your compliance plan. Use postings whose salary fields flow through to affiliates, spot-check major boards, and put range language in agreements with recruiters.
What to Do This Week: A Compliance Checklist
- Inventory every live posting. List each open role in Virginia and Maine, including internal-only promotion and transfer announcements and anything posted by a recruiter or staffing partner.
- Attach a good-faith range to each one. Base it on a pay scale, prior range, equivalent-position pay, or budgeted amount — and write down which basis you used.
- Scrub salary-history questions everywhere. Application forms, online questionnaires, interview guides, recruiter instructions, and reference-check scripts. In Virginia, train every interviewer on the ban and the no-retaliation rule.
- Build a range-on-request process. Maine employees can ask for the range of their position. Decide who answers, from which approved pay band, and how the answer is documented.
- Set up the three-year record trail. For each Maine employee, keep position history plus pay history for three years after they leave. Centralize it — a payroll system export plus a dated pay-band table beats scattered offer letters.
- Calendar a quarterly posting audit. Ranges go stale as budgets and market pay move. A range that was good-faith in August can be fiction by February.
- Treat complaints as urgent. In Virginia, a posting complaint starts a 15-business-day cure clock before a lawsuit can follow. Route any such notice straight to whoever can edit the posting that day.
What This Does to Your Labor Budget
Pay transparency does not just change job ads; it forces pay-band discipline. The moment every posting carries a range, candidates, employees, and competitors can all see your compensation logic — including its inconsistencies. Three bookkeeping-adjacent habits make this manageable:
- Write down pay bands before you post, not after. Each role gets a documented minimum, midpoint, and maximum tied to your budget. The posting range then comes from the band instead of from a manager's gut feeling on hiring day.
- Track offered pay against budgeted pay. When offers consistently land at the top of the band, that is either a band that needs updating or a budget variance worth investigating at month-end close.
- Watch for compression. New-hire ranges that overlap or exceed what tenured employees earn in the same role are the fastest route to retention problems — and to the internal range requests Maine now guarantees employees can make. A simple report comparing new-hire starting pay to incumbent pay by role catches this early.
In other words, the states just made your compensation structure public. Keeping clean, reconcilable payroll and budget records is what lets you defend it.
Keep Your Payroll and Books Aligned From Day One
Posting a compliant salary range is step one; proving your pay practices match your postings month after month is the ongoing work. That takes payroll records, pay-band tables, and budget comparisons you can actually reconcile — which is much easier when your financial data lives in an open, version-controlled ledger instead of scattered exports. Beancount.io offers plain-text accounting that gives you complete transparency and control over your financial data, so tracking labor costs against budget stays auditable as disclosure rules keep spreading. Get started for free and keep your books as transparent as your job postings now have to be.
