Cleveland Pay Transparency Law: The 2026 Employer Guide

Cleveland Pay Transparency Law: The 2026 Employer Guide

If you hire in Cleveland, the rules for how you post jobs and interview candidates have already changed. On October 27, 2025, Ordinance No. 104-2025 took effect, making Cleveland the first city in Ohio to require salary ranges in job postings and to ban questions about a candidate's pay history. Ohio has no statewide pay transparency law, so this is a city-level mandate that catches a lot of employers off guard, especially national companies that assumed the Midwest was a quiet zone. The ordinance is narrow in geography but broad in what it asks of you: publish a range on every posting, stop asking what people earn today, and be ready for a complaint-driven enforcement board. This guide breaks down who is covered, what you have to disclose, the exceptions you can lean on, and how to get compliant without slowing down your hiring.

TL;DR

• Cleveland's Ordinance No. 104-2025 took effect October 27, 2025 and applies to private employers with 15 or more employees within the city.
• You must include a salary range or scale in every job posting, advertisement, or notification, including postings used in PERM green-card recruitment.
• You cannot ask about, screen on, or rely solely on a candidate's salary history, and you cannot retaliate against someone who won't share it. You can discuss their salary expectations.
• Enforcement runs through Cleveland's Fair Employment and Wage Board, with civil penalties of up to $1,000, $2,500, and $5,000 based on prior violations in the past five years.
• The safest path to compliance is having defensible, pre-built pay ranges for every role before you post, which is where a structured job evaluation method earns its keep.

What Cleveland's pay transparency law actually requires

Ordinance No. 104-2025 does two things at once. First, it forces disclosure: covered employers must state the salary range or scale in any notification, advertisement, or other formal posting for a job. Second, it restricts inquiry: you can no longer ask candidates what they currently make or made in the past, and you can't build your offer around that number.

Both halves matter. Plenty of employers already list a range because they hire across states like Colorado or New York. What trips them up in Cleveland is the salary history piece, which reaches into the interview itself, not just the job ad. If your recruiters still ask "What's your current base?" on a screening call, that habit is now a violation.

The ordinance defines "salary" broadly. It covers wages, commissions, hourly earnings, other monetary earnings, and benefits. It does not cover objective measures of a candidate's output, such as revenue generated, sales closed, or other production numbers, so you can still discuss a candidate's track record in concrete performance terms.

Who is covered

The law applies to private employers with at least 15 employees within the City of Cleveland. That headcount is measured inside the city, not across your whole company, so a national employer with a small Cleveland office can still be on the hook if it has 15 or more people there.

A few categories sit outside the ordinance. Federal, state, and other local government employers are exempt, with one pointed exception: the City of Cleveland itself is covered. Positions where pay is set through collective bargaining also fall outside the disclosure and inquiry rules, because those numbers are negotiated at the table rather than set by the employer alone.

What counts as a "salary range or scale"

Here is the honest gap in the law: the ordinance requires a salary range or scale but never defines one. That ambiguity is real, and it means you should apply a good-faith standard rather than wait for a precise formula. The posted range should reflect what you genuinely expect to pay the person you hire, not a token span like "$40,000 to $400,000" designed to satisfy the letter of the rule while telling candidates nothing.

If you have watched other jurisdictions, this pattern is familiar. Regulators and courts tend to punish ranges that are obviously not made in good faith. A defensible range is one you can trace back to something: a job evaluation score, a salary survey cut, an internal band. If you can explain how you built the number, you are in far better shape than an employer who picked it to look compliant. For a deeper walkthrough of building ranges that hold up, see our guide to defensible pay ranges.

Note one wrinkle that catches larger employers: postings used in the PERM labor-certification process for green-card sponsorship also have to carry a range. Immigration recruitment is not exempt.

The salary history ban

The inquiry restrictions are where most Cleveland employers need to retrain their teams. Under the ordinance, a covered employer cannot:

• Ask a candidate about their current or prior compensation, including benefits.
• Screen candidates based on their compensation history, such as requiring them to meet a minimum or maximum prior-pay threshold.
• Rely solely on a candidate's compensation history to decide whether to hire them or how much to pay them.
• Refuse to hire, or otherwise retaliate against, a candidate who declines to share their pay history.

What you can and can't ask

You can still ask about salary expectations. "What are you looking for in this role?" is fine. "What do you make now?" is not. The line is between what a candidate wants going forward and what they have earned in the past. Train every person who touches hiring, including external recruiters and hiring managers, because a single stray question on a phone screen can create exposure.

Exceptions you can rely on

The ordinance carves out several situations where the salary history rules do not apply. You are on solid ground when:

• Reliance on compensation history is authorized by another federal, state, or local law.
• The candidate is applying for an internal transfer or promotion with their current employer.
• The candidate voluntarily and without prompting discloses their pay history.
• You obtain pay history through a background check or while verifying non-compensation information, as long as you do not rely solely on that history to set pay.
• You are rehiring a former employee whose pay history you already have.
• The position's pay is set by collective bargaining.

These exceptions are narrow. The internal-promotion carve-out, for example, does not free you from thinking about internal equity; it just means the ordinance's inquiry ban is not triggered for your existing staff.

How enforcement works, and what penalties look like

Cleveland's Fair Employment and Wage Board (FEWB) enforces the ordinance. Any person can file a complaint alleging a violation, which means candidates, current employees, and even third parties can trigger a review.

The board is designed to correct before it punishes. It first tries to resolve issues through education, conference, conciliation, and persuasion rather than immediately assessing a fine. Employers who receive a complaint are given a window to address the alleged violation before penalties land. If the conduct is not fixed, the FEWB can assess civil penalties that scale with your record: up to $1,000 for a first violation, up to $2,500 for a second, and up to $5,000 for a third or later violation counted within the preceding five years. Employers can appeal penalties.

The dollar figures are modest per violation, but they add up across many postings, and the reputational cost of a public complaint is harder to price. The cheaper path is to get your postings and interview scripts right before anyone files. For a clause-by-clause read of the requirements, the employment-law firm Jackson Lewis published a helpful breakdown of the Cleveland ordinance.

How Cleveland compares to other Ohio cities

Cleveland is not Ohio's first move on pay, but it is the most demanding. Several Ohio cities have acted, and they do not all work the same way, which matters if you hire across the state.

The takeaway: a single Ohio-wide policy will not keep you compliant. Cincinnati's disclose-on-request model is very different from Cleveland's disclose-on-every-posting model, so you need location-aware posting rules rather than one national template.

A practical compliance checklist

If you hire in Cleveland, work through these six steps:

1. Confirm whether you have 15 or more employees within the city limits.
1. Build a defensible salary range for every role you post, tied to a repeatable method rather than a manager's gut.
1. Update job-posting templates so a range appears on every ad, including PERM recruitment postings.
1. Scrub applications and screening scripts to remove every salary history question.
1. Train recruiters and hiring managers on the difference between salary expectations (allowed) and salary history (banned).
1. Set up a fast internal process to fix a flagged posting within the FEWB's cure window.

Step two is the one employers underestimate. Publishing a range is easy; publishing a range you can defend requires knowing what each job is actually worth relative to every other job in your organization. If you want a fast way to score and rank roles consistently, our point-factor method guide shows how to turn subjective calls into repeatable numbers, and PointFactors can evaluate your jobs so your ranges rest on something concrete.

Frequently asked questions

When did Cleveland's pay transparency law take effect? Ordinance No. 104-2025 took effect on October 27, 2025. Cleveland City Council passed it in late April 2025.

Does the law apply to remote jobs? The ordinance targets employers with 15 or more employees within the City of Cleveland. If you are posting a role that will be worked in Cleveland or based out of a Cleveland office, treat it as covered and include a range. When in doubt for hybrid or remote roles connected to Cleveland, disclosing a good-faith range is the safer choice.

What is the penalty for not posting a salary range? Civil penalties run up to $1,000 for a first violation, up to $2,500 for a second, and up to $5,000 for a third or later violation within the preceding five years. The Fair Employment and Wage Board usually seeks to resolve issues through conciliation first and gives employers a window to correct a violation.

Can we still ask candidates what salary they want? Yes. You can ask about a candidate's salary expectations for the role. You cannot ask about their current or prior compensation, screen them on it, or rely solely on it to set their pay.

Does the salary history ban apply to internal promotions? No. The ordinance's inquiry restrictions do not apply to candidates seeking an internal transfer or promotion with their current employer. You should still manage internal equity carefully, but the salary history rules are not triggered.

How is Cleveland different from Cincinnati's law? Cincinnati requires employers to provide a pay scale only on request, and only after a conditional offer. Cleveland requires a range in the posting itself. If you hire in both cities, you need different posting rules for each.

Pay transparency is no longer a coastal problem. Cleveland has made it a Cleveland problem, and the states around you keep adding rules of their own. The employers who handle this well are not the ones scrambling to bolt a range onto each posting; they are the ones who already know what every job is worth and can publish a range in seconds. If you want ranges you can defend to a candidate, an auditor, or an enforcement board, book a PointFactors demo and see how structured job evaluation turns compliance from a fire drill into a byproduct of good pay design. For a broader view of what is at stake, read our breakdown of pay transparency penalties in 2026.

Justin Hampton is the founder and CEO of PointFactors.