Missouri salary history ban: no state law, the Kansas City ordinance and St. Louis city jobs

Missouri has no statewide law that bars employers from asking job candidates about their salary history, as of October 2026. Kansas City, Missouri does: Code section 38-102, in effect since October 31, 2019, makes it unlawful for employers with six or more employees, and their agents, to ask about an applicant's salary history, screen on it, rely on it to set pay, or penalize someone who will not share it. St. Louis has a narrower rule covering only its own city government jobs, adopted as Ordinance 71095 in 2020.

For recruiters, Missouri is two states: Kansas City, where the question is banned and agencies are named, and everywhere else, where it is lawful but limited by equal pay law. This page covers both, plus the Illinois side of the St. Louis metro.

Is there a statewide Missouri salary history ban?

No. We found no Missouri statute that limits pay history questions, and the 2025 and 2026 House bill lists contain no bill that would add one. Our guide to hiring employees in Missouri and Missouri background check guide reach the same conclusion. The rules that do exist are local, and the one that reaches private employers is Kansas City's.

What does Kansas City's salary history ordinance require?

The City Council passed Committee Substitute for Ordinance No. 190380 on May 23, 2019, creating Code section 38-102 with an effective date of October 31, 2019. Section 38-102(a) makes it unlawful "for an employer or agent" to:

1. "Inquire about the salary history of an applicant for employment";
2. Screen applicants based on current or prior wages, benefits or other compensation, "including requiring that an applicant's prior wages, benefits, other compensation or salary history satisfy minimum or maximum criteria";
3. Rely on salary history "in deciding whether to offer employment to an applicant, or in determining the salary, benefits, or other compensation for such applicant during the hiring process, including the negotiation of an employment contract"; or
4. "Refuse to hire or otherwise disfavor, injure or retaliate against an applicant for not disclosing his or her salary history."

Key definitions

• Employer: "any person employing six or more employees."
• Applicant: "any person applying for employment with an employer located in Kansas City, Missouri." Kansas City, Kansas is a separate city in another state and is not covered.
• Salary history: current or prior "wages, benefits, or other compensation," but not "any objective measure of the applicant's productivity, such as revenue, sales, or other production reports."
• Inquire: any question or statement to the applicant, the applicant's current or prior employer, or their employees or agents "for the purpose of obtaining an applicant's salary history," and also "to conduct a search of publicly available records or reports" for that purpose. Telling the applicant the position's pay or range is not inquiring.

What is allowed

Section 38-102(b) lets an employer or its agent, without asking about history, discuss "expectations with respect to salary, benefits, and other compensation, including but not limited to unvested equity or deferred compensation that an applicant would forfeit." Section 38-102(c) says the prohibitions do not apply to:

• applicants for internal transfer or promotion with their current employer;
• "a voluntary and unprompted disclosure of salary history information by an Applicant";
• verifying non-salary information or running a background check, but if the check discloses salary history, it "shall not be relied upon" to set pay;
• positions whose pay is set through collective bargaining; and
• applicants re-hired within five years of their last termination, where the employer already has their salary data from that employment.

Penalty

Section 38-101(a), as re-enacted by Ordinance No. 240082 in 2024, makes a prohibited discriminatory practice, including a section 38-102 violation, an ordinance violation "punishable by a fine of not more than $500.00, by imprisonment of not more than 180 days, or by such fine and imprisonment." The city department named in Chapter 38 was renamed the Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity Department in 2021.

What does the Kansas City ordinance mean for staffing agencies?

The ordinance applies to an "employer or agent," so an agency recruiting for a Kansas City employer with six or more employees is bound when it screens for that client. The "inquire" definition closes the indirect routes too: no pay questions to references or former employers, and no searching public salary records to find a figure. A Kansas City intake should cover:

• Confirm where the hiring employer is located and how many people it employs.
• Get the range in writing before sourcing; telling the candidate the range is expressly allowed.
• Order background checks without salary verification, and if a report shows pay anyway, keep it out of the offer conversation.
• Use a candidate submittal template with an expectation field, not a current-pay field.

Kansas City also restricts when employers may ask about criminal history; see ban the box in Missouri.

What does St. Louis Ordinance 71095 cover?

St. Louis Ordinance 71095, Board Bill 171 of the 2019-2020 session, took effect March 11, 2020. According to the city's summary, it bars city departments, offices and divisions, the Mayor's office, the Board of Aldermen, the Collector of Revenue, Treasurer, Recorder of Deeds, License Collector, Circuit Attorney, Sheriff and Board of Election Commissioners from asking applicants about salary history, including wages, benefits and other compensation. Exceptions cover internal promotions and transfers, unsolicited disclosures, positions set by collective bargaining, rehires within five years whose information the city already holds, and unprompted disclosures during a background check.

It does not apply to private employers in St. Louis. An agency filling a private job in the city may ask, subject to equal pay law, unless the job or the worker is across the river in Illinois.

What do Missouri and federal equal pay law say about prior pay?

Missouri's 1963 equal pay law, RSMo 290.410, bars paying a woman less than men "in the same establishment for the same quantity and quality of the same classification of work," while allowing differences based on seniority, length of service, ability, skill, duties, shift, hours, lifting limits, "or other reasonable differentiation, or factors other than sex, when exercised in good faith." Its definition of employer in RSMo 290.400 includes any "agent, manager, representative" with control over a worker's wages.

The federal Equal Pay Act, 29 U.S.C. § 206(d)(1), applies as well. The EEOC's Compliance Manual, Section 10 says "prior salary cannot, by itself, justify a compensation disparity" and that an employer relying on it must show it "did not rely solely on it." Outside Kansas City, that is the practical limit on using a current salary to set an offer.

Which cross-border rules matter in Missouri's metro areas?

• St. Louis metro and Illinois. 820 ILCS 112/10 bars employers and employment agencies from screening on, requiring or seeking pay history, and a volunteered figure still cannot be used. Jobs in the Metro East, and remote workers based in Illinois, follow the Illinois salary history ban.
• Kansas City metro. The ordinance turns on whether the employer is located in Kansas City, Missouri. A job with an employer in Overland Park or Kansas City, Kansas is outside its definition of applicant; an employer with sites on both sides should get advice on which hires it covers.
• Remote roles. A candidate who will work from California, Colorado or another ban state can bring that state's rule; see salary history ban states.

What can a recruiter ask instead?

Opening the pay topic (works everywhere, required in Kansas City)

"The range is $60,000 to $70,000 plus benefits (example figures). What are you looking for, and is there anything you'd give up by leaving, like an unvested bonus?"

When a Kansas City client asks for current pay

"Kansas City's ordinance covers us as your agent, so I can't ask or look it up. Her expectation is $68,000 and she'd forfeit about $4,000 in unvested stock."

When a candidate volunteers it unprompted

The Kansas City exception protects a voluntary, unprompted disclosure, but the safer habit is to record the expectation, not the history; see salary expectation questions.

Missouri salary history rules at a glance