Expanded Pay Transparency Requirements Coming to Columbus, Ohio

Columbus has expanded its pay equity law, adding new transparency requirements to a salary history ban that took effect in March 2024.

On November 3, 2025, the Columbus City Council approved Ordinance 2898-2025 (the “Amendment”), amending Chapter 2335 of the Columbus City Code. Mayor Andrew Ginther signed the Amendment into law the next day.

The Amendment requires employers to include reasonable salary ranges in job postings or when otherwise advertising job openings, aligning Columbus with similar pay equity requirements recently enacted in Cleveland, which took effect on October 27, 2025. The Amendment takes effect on December 3, 2025, but enforcement is delayed until January 1, 2027, giving employers in the state’s capital more than a year to comply with the new requirements.

Requirements for Employers

The Amendment covers the same employers as those already covered by the City’s existing salary history ban, only applying to employers with 15 or more employees within the City of Columbus.

The Amendment requires that employers posting or advertising positions that are based, or will otherwise be performed, in the City of Columbus include in the job posting a “reasonable salary range or scale.”. The salary range should include figures such as wages, commissions, hourly earnings, or any other type of monetary earning. While the Amendment does not require exact figures, it does mandate disclosure of a reasonable, good faith range of expected pay. The Amendment bases the “reasonableness” of the range on factors like:

• The flexibility of the employer’s budget;
• The anticipated range of experience job applicants may have;
• The potential variation in the responsibilities and duties of the position;
• The opportunities for growth in and beyond the position;
• The cost of living where the employee may work; and
• Market research on comparable positions and salaries.

These requirements don’t apply to applicants or postings for positions involving internal transfers or promotions within an organization.

The initial prohibitions in the City’s salary history ban are unchanged. Accordingly, employers remain prohibited from inquiring about salary history, screening job applicants based on their salary history, and more. An in-depth analysis of those requirements and prohibitions can be found here.

Enforcement

The Community Relations Commission will continue as the enforcement hand for the Amendment. The Amendment permits applicants to file complaints against a covered employer in accordance with the existing complaint procedure provided in the Columbus City Code’s civil rights ordinance. Employers are subject to civil penalties of up to $5,000 for multiple violations.

How to Prepare

Covered employers should prepare to update job postings for open or advertised positions to include the required salary or hourly wage information. Conducting a thorough pay audit of both current and prospective positions’ wages and benefits, with the aid of the Amendment’s listed factors, will help ensure compliance with the Amendment heading into 2027. Training hiring managers to shift conversation away from salary history and toward pay expectations throughout the process will both ensure that employers remain compliant with the existing salary history ban and that applicants enter and leave the process in a more comfortable fashion.

With the increasing prevalence of salary history bans and pay transparency laws throughout the country amid a continued remote work environment, all employers should be aware of pay equity laws in other locations where they operate or have employees and, as necessary, take steps to ensure compliance.

Staff Attorney Elizabeth A. Ledkovsky assisted with the preparation of this update.