Pay Transparency Laws: Posting Pay Ranges for Behavioral Health Jobs

BehavioralHires counted fourteen states plus the District of Columbia with a pay-range posting law in effect on October 6, 2026: Colorado, California, Washington, New York, Hawaii, DC, Maryland, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont, Massachusetts, Virginia, Maine and Connecticut.

Delaware has passed its law (HS 2 for HB 105) but it was not yet in force as of October 7, 2026 — it takes effect two years after enactment.

The map moves, so date-stamp any list you copy from this page or anywhere else.

Who is covered varies more than the list does.

Colorado's rules reach every employer with at least one employee in Colorado, and Connecticut's cover employers of any size from October 1, 2026.

At the other end, Hawaii's applies to employers with 50 or more employees.

In between: New York at four or more employees, Vermont at five, New Jersey and Maine at 10, California, Washington and Illinois at 15, Massachusetts at 25 or more in the state, and Minnesota at 30 or more in Minnesota.

Two of these laws treat commission pay differently: a Vermont ad for a job paid wholly or partly on commission says so instead of giving a range, and Maine's rule does not require a range when the job is paid solely on commission.

Where a size or date cell above is blank, the sources behind this page do not record one — confirm it with the state labor department before you rely on the row.

Virginia deserves a specific check: its law (Virginia Code 40.1-28.7:12, effective July 1, 2026) requires every public and internal posting to disclose the wage, salary or range, but the statute text behind this page does not state an employee threshold, so confirm coverage with the Virginia Attorney General's office rather than assuming either way.

Some of these rules also reach inside your organization.

Maryland's law covers each public or internal posting for positions performed at least partly in Maryland, Connecticut's covers every internal or public job advertisement, and Virginia's covers every public and internal posting — so promoting a counselor to clinical director is a covered posting in those states.

New York City has run its own rule since November 1, 2022: a good-faith pay range in all job advertisements, which a New York City ad needs on top of the state's requirements.

Four of the laws read for this page have language that decides remote-job coverage.

Colorado says a covered employer's remote job posting must comply even if the posting says Coloradans will not be considered.

New York's law covers a job performed outside New York when it reports to a New York supervisor, office or work site, and Illinois does the same for positions performed at least partly in the state or reporting to an Illinois supervisor, office or work site.

Maryland's rule attaches to positions physically performed at least partly in Maryland, which, read literally, reaches a telehealth job worked from a Maryland home just as it does an office job.

For a telehealth ad, the reporting line is often what decides it: the clinician can live anywhere, but the supervisor, office or work site the role reports to sits in one state, and under New York's and Illinois's laws that state's rule can govern the ad.

Before you mark a posting remote, decide whether you will accept applicants who live in the covered states — and note that Colorado does not give a covered employer that opt-out: its rule requires a remote posting to comply even if the posting says Coloradans will not be considered.

If you will accept applicants from a covered state, the ad needs a compliant range there, and the simplest way to stay consistent across states is one template with the range and the benefits paragraph built in, rather than a per-state edit for every ad.

The wider obligations that come with a cross-state hire — licensure, registration, payroll — are covered in our guide to hiring remote clinicians in other states.

Here is the gap for behavioral health employers: none of the pay-transparency statutes or agency guidance reviewed for this page addresses per-session or fee-for-service clinician pay specifically.

Four of the definitions this page quotes speak of salary or hourly ranges — California's "pay scale" is a good-faith estimate of the salary or hourly wage range the employer reasonably expects to pay for the position upon hire, New York's is the minimum and maximum annual salary or hourly range the employer in good faith believes accurate when posting, Hawaii's is the hourly rate or salary range that reasonably reflects actual expected pay, and DC's is the minimum and maximum projected salary or hourly pay.

In the texts reviewed for this page, a posting that lists only a per-session rate has no explicit safe harbor in those four.

Two states come closest to naming non-hourly pay.

Colorado's posting rule requires the rate of pay or a range of possible rates and a statement of whether it is hourly, salary, piece rate or another type — piece rate being the nearest labelled cousin of per-session work.

Connecticut defines "wages" to include compensation determined on a time, task, piece, commission or other basis of calculation, the widest list of pay bases in the definitions this page quotes; read literally, that counts pay determined on a task or piece basis as wages for Connecticut's posting rule, but nothing reviewed applies the wording to therapy sessions by name.

So state both numbers.

The practical approach this page takes — an operational suggestion, not a reading of the statutes — is to give the per-session rate and an hourly or annual equivalent range in the same posting, and say what the equivalent assumes: sessions per week, documentation time, whether cancelled sessions are paid.

Describe productivity pay, such as per-session bonuses or incentives tied to completed sessions, as other compensation, which is where Colorado's rule puts bonuses, commissions and tips.

And whatever format you choose, the range needs a top and a bottom: Colorado bars open-ended ranges like "$30,000 and up" or "up to $60,000", and Minnesota's law says a salary range may not be open-ended.

Where the session expectations behind those numbers come from is a separate decision, covered in our guide to productivity and caseload targets; if you are still choosing between salaried, salaried-plus and per-session pay, start with clinician pay models.

Six of the laws read for this page require a benefits description alongside the range.

Washington requires a general description of all of the benefits and other compensation to be offered to the hired applicant.

Illinois requires the pay scale and benefits in the posting, and lets a hyperlink to a public page with the information satisfy the rule.

Maryland requires the wage range plus a general description of benefits and any other compensation, and Minnesota, New Jersey and Connecticut each require a general description of benefits with the pay.

DC adds a deadline: employers there must disclose healthcare benefits before the first interview, so the paragraph cannot wait for the offer.

Colorado's rule asks for a general description of other compensation, with bonuses, commissions and tips as its examples.

Write one plain-language benefits paragraph per role and reuse it in every posting.

For behavioral health roles, spell out in that paragraph the things the statutes quoted above do not name: whether the role includes supervision toward licensure, a CEU budget or license renewal coverage, loan-repayment help, the mileage reimbursement policy for in-home staff, and whether a late cancellation or no-show comes out of the clinician's paycheck.

Describing those terms up front also saves the argument in the offer; loan repayment in particular is worth getting right before the ad runs, and our guide to loan repayment as a recruiting tool covers the structures.

Enforcement designs differ state by state, and the difference decides what a missing or vague range can cost you.

Two of these designs have a built-in correction path.

California charges no penalty for a first violation when the employer demonstrates that all job postings for open positions have been updated to include the pay scale — the fix it rewards is a full sweep, not just the posting in front of you.

Washington's protection runs on a clock: through July 27, 2027, an employer that fixes a posting within five business days of written notice is protected.

For the other states in the table, the amounts above are what the statute texts state — confirm the current enforcement posture with the state labor department or attorney general.

Run the checklist per posting, not once a year.

Three of these laws took effect in 2026 — Virginia on July 1, Maine on July 29 and Connecticut on October 1 — and Delaware's is enacted but not yet in force, so a compliance list copied from last year is already stale.

The sequence: identify every state where the work could be done and every state that houses the supervisor, office or work site the role reports to — for a remote posting, remember that Colorado requires a covered employer's remote posting to comply even if it says Coloradans will not be considered; check your employee count against each covered state's threshold; write the range with a real top and bottom; pair per-session rates with an hourly or annual equivalent; paste in the benefits paragraph; and sweep internal postings for promotions and transfers, which Maryland's, Connecticut's and Virginia's rules reach.

Then write the ad itself — structure, wording, what belongs where — with our guide to writing job ads, and list the role on the behavioral health hiring hub when it is ready.