Kansas salary history ban: no state law, the Kansas City, Missouri ordinance and what still applies

Kansas has no statewide law that bars employers from asking job candidates about their salary history, for private or public employers, as of October 2026. A search of the Kansas Legislature's bills and statutes finds no salary history provision and no 2025–2026 bill, and the last attempt, HB 2637 in 2020, died in committee. Recruiters in the Kansas City metro still need one local rule: Kansas City, Missouri bans salary history questions for employers located there with six or more employees and for their agents. Federal equal pay law, which in the Tenth Circuit does not let prior salary alone justify a pay gap, applies everywhere in Kansas.

This page sets out what the absence of a Kansas law means in practice, what does apply, and a process that works for a desk recruiting on both sides of State Line Road. For the rest of the Kansas hiring rules, start at the Kansas hiring hub; for the states that do ban the question, see salary history ban states.

Does Kansas have a salary history ban?

No. Three checks support that answer as of October 30, 2026:

• The statutes. A search of the Kansas Legislature's bill and statute search for the exact phrases "salary history", "wage history" and "pay history" returns nothing, and "compensation history" returns only an unrelated definitions section.
• The current session. The same search covers the 2025–2026 session and finds no bill on the subject, introduced or passed.
• The last attempt. HB 2637, introduced on February 12, 2020, was titled "Prohibiting employers and employment agencies from requiring or using compensation history of job applicants in the employment process." It was referred to the Committee on Commerce, Labor and Economic Development and died in committee on May 21, 2020.

Kansas also has no pay range posting law, so neither half of the pay transparency package that many states have adopted applies here. Our Kansas hiring checklist reaches the same conclusion for both.

Are Kansas state agencies or cities barred from asking?

State agencies: we found no statute or executive order. Governor Laura Kelly's Executive Order 19-02, filed January 15, 2019, prohibits discrimination in state employment, services and contracts and requires merit-based hiring on state contracts, but it does not mention pay history.

Cities and counties: we found no salary history ordinance in a Kansas city, including Wichita, Overland Park, Kansas City, Kansas, Olathe, Topeka and Lawrence, though we could not read every municipal code in full. Kansas does limit what cities can require of employers: K.S.A. 12-16,130 bars local ordinances that require employers to provide leave, pay above the minimum wage, offer benefits beyond state and federal law, or adjust employee scheduling. It does not mention questions asked of applicants. Unlike Wisconsin and Michigan, which our state list covers, Kansas has no statute that expressly forbids a local salary history ban, and no Kansas city has passed one that we found.

What does the Kansas City, Missouri ordinance require?

For metro recruiters this is the rule that matters. Kansas City, Missouri's Committee Substitute for Ordinance No. 190380, passed May 23, 2019, created section 38-102 of the city code, effective October 31, 2019. From the authenticated text:

Two features matter for Kansas-based recruiters. First, the ban reaches an employer's "agent", so a staffing firm in Overland Park recruiting for a client located in Kansas City, Missouri is inside it. Second, the background check exception does not let you use what the check turns up: if a verification report shows pay, it cannot shape the offer. Our Missouri hiring checklist and Missouri ban-the-box guide cover the city's other hiring rules.

Which pay laws still apply to Kansas employers?

The federal Equal Pay Act, as read in the Tenth Circuit

The Equal Pay Act, 29 U.S.C. 206(d), bars paying one sex less than the other for equal work in the same establishment unless the difference rests on seniority, merit, quantity or quality of production, or "any other factor other than sex." Kansas is in the Tenth Circuit, whose 2015 opinion in Riser v. QEP Energy accepted that former salary "can be considered" but held that the Act "precludes an employer from relying solely upon a prior salary to justify pay disparity." The EEOC's Compliance Manual section on compensation discrimination, still published on its site as of October 2026, takes the same line: "Prior salary cannot, by itself, justify a compensation disparity," because prior salaries "can reflect sex-based compensation discrimination."

So asking is lawful in Kansas, but an offer anchored on a candidate's old pay is the hardest kind of offer to defend if a pay gap is later challenged.

The Kansas Act Against Discrimination

K.S.A. 44-1009(a)(1) makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate in compensation because of sex, race and other listed traits, or "to follow any employment procedure or practice which, in fact, results in discrimination" without "a valid business necessity." The act covers employers with four or more employees and employment agencies, which K.S.A. 44-1002 defines as anyone undertaking "to procure, recruit, refer or place employees." A complaint must reach the Kansas Human Rights Commission within six months of the act, under K.S.A. 44-1005(i). We found no Kansas ruling applying this to salary history questions; the point is that a pay practice which carries an old gap forward can be challenged under state law as well as federal law.

Kansas's own equal pay statute

K.S.A. 44-1205 mirrors the federal rule, with the same four exceptions. It sits in the Kansas minimum wage law, whose definition of "employer" in K.S.A. 44-1202(d) leaves out any employer subject to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, so in practice it reaches only small employers outside the FLSA.

Do other states' bans reach Kansas employers?

They can. Salary history laws attach to where the job or the applicant is, not where the employer is headquartered. A Kansas company hiring someone who will work in Colorado follows Colorado's rule, which our Colorado guide describes as covering any employer with someone working in that state; a remote role open to candidates in California, Illinois or New York raises the same question. If one requisition attracts candidates from several states, the simplest compliant process is the strictest one: do not ask anyone.

What can a recruiter still ask in Kansas?

Kansas summary table

How should staffing agencies and recruiters handle pay in Kansas?

The law allows the question, but most desks that recruit in Kansas also recruit in Missouri, Colorado or for remote roles, and a single habit is easier to keep than a state-by-state one:

1. Lead with the range. Get the client's range at intake and say it early, then ask what the candidate wants. Wording that works on a call is in salary expectation questions.
2. Flag Kansas City, Missouri requisitions. Tag any client located in Kansas City, Missouri so that nobody on the desk, and nobody at the client, asks about current pay or orders salary verification.
3. Drop "current salary" from forms and submittals. A submittal template with an expectation field and no history field works in every state.
4. Keep volunteered figures out of the record. If a candidate states their current pay, record the expectation, not the history; see what not to write in interview notes.
5. Set offers from the job. Write down the job-related reasons for the number: skills, experience, the range, internal equity. That record is what answers an equal pay question later.
6. Check background vendors. Kansas does not stop a report from including pay, but Kansas background check rules and the FCRA still govern the report, and for Kansas City, Missouri roles any pay it shows cannot be used.

A Kansas script

Opening the pay topic

"The range for this role is $62,000 to $70,000 plus benefits (example figures). What are you looking for?"

When the candidate asks whether you need their current salary

"No. We set pay from the role and the range, so what matters is whether that range works for you."

When a client in Kansas City, Missouri asks what the candidate earns now

"The city's ordinance bars us as your recruiter from asking or passing that on. Her expectation is $68,000, and she'd forfeit a bonus by leaving in March." For more replies, see how recruiters answer candidate salary questions.

Kansas checklist

1. Confirm where the job is performed and where the employer is located; if either is in Kansas City, Missouri, or in a state with a ban, follow that rule.
2. Share the range and ask about expectations, not history, on every Kansas requisition.
3. Remove salary history fields from applications, intake forms and submittals.
4. Do not anchor an offer on prior pay alone, and document the job-related reasons for every offer.
5. Recheck the Kansas Legislature in January, when the 2027 session opens; this page reflects bills through the 2026 session.

Other Kansas pages: staffing agency licensing, E-Verify, drug testing, non-competes and recording interviews.