The interview has gone well. You have talked through the job, the shift and the team. Then a question lands that quietly set the ceiling on Nevada paychecks for decades. What are you making right now. For years the honest answer became the anchor. A worker underpaid at one Las Vegas employer carried that gap into the next job, and the one after that. The Nevada salary history ban closed that loop. Under NRS 613.133, an employer or employment agency may not seek an applicant’s wage or salary history. It may not rely on that history either. It also may not punish an applicant who declines to share it.
The same statute flips the flow of information. It requires the employer to tell you what the job pays. This guide walks through what the section says, where a complaint goes and which deadlines apply. It also explains why one improper question in a Nevada interview room can become real evidence later.
What NRS 613.133 Forbids a Nevada Employer to Do
The prohibition reads broadly on purpose. Subsection 1 binds both an employer and an employment agency. Neither may act, orally or in writing, personally or through an agent, to do any of these things.
- Seek the wage or salary history of an applicant for employment.
- Rely on that history to decide whether to offer employment, or to set the applicant’s rate of pay.
- Refuse to interview, hire, promote or employ an applicant who declines to give wage or salary history.
- Discriminate or retaliate against an applicant on that same ground.
Read those words closely, because most real violations hide in the details. Orally or in writing reaches a field on an online application, not just a question across a desk. Personally or through an agent blocks a staffing agency, a recruiter or a screening service from asking. Casino resorts, warehouse operators in North Las Vegas and healthcare systems all staff heavily through outside recruiters. So that clause does a great deal of work.
The definition of what is off limits also runs wider than a base wage. NRS 613.133 defines wage or salary history as pay from a current or former employer. It expressly includes, without limitation, any compensation and benefits from that employer. So a request for your last commission statement crosses the line. So does a request for your tip income, your bonus structure, your prior benefits package or a W2.
The word employer runs broad too. It covers public and private employers in this State, including the State of Nevada, its agencies and its political subdivisions. A county job, a city job, a school district posting and a Strip property share the same rule.
The Pay Range a Nevada Employer Owes You
Subsection 2 is the half of the statute most applicants never use. It is also the half that changes negotiations. It creates two separate disclosure duties, and they do not work the same way.
After a Completed Interview
The employer or agency must provide the wage or salary range or rate for the position. That duty runs to an applicant who has completed an interview for it. Note what is missing from that sentence. Nothing requires you to ask first. Once the interview is complete, the duty attaches. Suppose you walked out of an interview in Henderson or Reno without hearing the range. If nobody posted it, the employer did not follow the statute.
When You Apply for a Promotion or a Transfer
For internal moves the statute asks more of the employee. An employer must give the range or rate for a promotion or transfer only after three things happen. The employee applied for it. The employee completed an interview for it or received an offer. And the employee requested the range or rate. All three conditions matter, which means the request matters. An employee who wants the number for an internal posting should ask in writing and keep the message. That written request triggers the duty. It also proves the trigger.
The One Pay Question That Is Still Allowed
Nevada did not ban all conversation about money. Subsection 3 lets an employer or employment agency ask about your wage or salary expectation for the position. Expectation and history are different things. The line between them is where a lot of hiring managers get into trouble.
What are you looking to earn in this role is a lawful question. What do you currently earn is not. Neither is a demand for your last two pay stubs before the process moves forward. Neither is a request to confirm the number so the employer can match it. An application field labeled current compensation fails the same test. Sometimes an interviewer asks about expectations, then presses until you disclose what you make now. At that point the conversation has crossed the line the statute drew.
Where a Nevada Salary History Ban Complaint Actually Goes
This is the point most articles get wrong. Getting it wrong costs people time they cannot get back. Subsection 4 declares a violation of NRS 613.133 an unlawful employment practice. Yet the statute routes the complaint to the Office of the Labor Commissioner, not to a discrimination agency. Under subsection 5, a person may file a complaint with the Labor Commissioner over that practice.
The remedies on that track are administrative. Under NRS 613.133(6), the Labor Commissioner may impose an administrative penalty for each violation. That penalty sits on top of any other remedy. The statute caps the amount. A cap is a ceiling, not a measure of what a case is worth. If a penalty lands, subsection 7 also lets the Commissioner recover the costs of the proceeding. Those costs include investigative costs and attorney fees.
The Labor Commissioner keeps offices serving Southern Nevada and Northern Nevada and accepts written complaints. The practical value of that filing is not only the penalty. It creates a dated, sworn account of the question and the person who asked it. That account often matters more later than the penalty itself.
When the Question Belongs at the Equal Rights Commission
The salary history ban and Nevada’s discrimination law are separate machines. A single hiring process can feed both. Perhaps you believe the pay decision or the refusal to hire turned on a protected trait. Those traits include race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, religion and national origin. That is a discrimination charge. Under NRS 613.405 it goes to the Nevada Equal Rights Commission, or to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Commission sits inside the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation. It runs intake offices in Las Vegas and Reno. Its jurisdiction and complaint process appear on the Nevada Equal Rights Commission pages at DETR.
Choosing between the two agencies is a real decision with real consequences. So is understanding how the two share a charge under their worksharing relationship. Our guide on filing a Nevada workplace discrimination charge with NERC or the EEOC walks through that choice.
Nevada’s Freestanding Equal Pay Rule
Nevada also carries an equal pay provision inside the wage statutes. NRS 608.017 bars an employer from discriminating between employees in the same establishment on the basis of sex. The test is paying one employee less than an employee of the opposite sex for equal work. Equal work means work requiring equal skill, effort and responsibility, performed under similar working conditions. The statute carves out a seniority system, a merit system and a system measuring quantity or quality of production. It also carves out a differential based on factors other than sex. And it forbids an employer from cutting the higher paid worker’s wages to fix the gap.
The Deadlines That Quietly End These Cases
Employment deadlines in Nevada run short, much shorter than people expect. Many Nevadans have absorbed the idea that they have two years to bring a claim. That comes from NRS 11.190(4)(e), which sets a two year limit for a personal injury action. That is the deadline for a car crash or a fall on a casino floor. It has nothing to do with a hiring or pay claim. Assuming otherwise is one of the most expensive mistakes a worker can make.
- Under NRS 233.160, an employment discrimination complaint must reach the Commission within 300 days of the alleged practice. A filing with an appropriate federal agency inside that period also counts.
- Under NRS 613.412, the Commission must issue a right to sue notice on request once 180 days have passed. That notice says a civil action in district court must follow within 90 days after you receive it.
- Under NRS 613.420, the Commission issues a right to sue notice if it finds no unfair employment practice. The same 90 day window applies.
- NRS 613.430 sets the outer limit. No action may start more than 180 days after the act complained of. Nor may it start more than 90 days after receipt of the notice, whichever is later. The clock tolls while a complaint sits pending before the Commission.
The workable habit is simple. Treat the day of the interview, the offer or the pay decision as day one. Then get advice long before month ten. A Labor Commissioner complaint about a salary history question should go in promptly for the same reason. Recruiters move on, screening software gets reconfigured, and application portals purge old submissions.
Why an Improper Salary Question Is Such Useful Evidence
Standing alone, a wage history question is a statutory violation. An administrative penalty attaches to it. Sitting inside a pay discrimination case, it is often the most useful fact in the file. There are three reasons for that.
First, it supplies causation. The hardest part of a pay case is usually explaining how the gap came to exist. When an employer asked for prior pay, then set the offer near that number, the mechanism shows. It explains why two people doing the same work at the same Nevada property started far apart.
Second, it is documentary. Wage history requests tend to live in writing, in application forms, recruiter emails, applicant tracking fields and interview notes. Those records outlast anyone’s memory of a conversation. A lawyer can also pull them and compare them across many applicants.
Third, it undercuts the standard defense. Employers usually explain a pay gap with a factor other than sex or race. Prior compensation is a favorite. In Nevada that explanation is awkward at best. Relying on wage history to set pay is exactly what NRS 613.133 forbids. For the mechanics of building that kind of case, see our guide on how to prove pay discrimination. Our overview of racial discrimination case outcomes in Nevada is a useful reality check, with no number promised.
What to Write Down Tonight
Suppose a Nevada employer asked what it should not have. The record you build in the first week beats anything reconstructed months later.
- Save the job posting and the full application, including screenshots of every field, before the listing comes down.
- Write down the date, the location and who was in the room or on the call. Note the exact wording of the question and how you answered.
- Keep every email and text from the recruiter, the staffing agency and the hiring manager.
- Note whether anyone told you the wage or salary range after the interview. If so, record what number you heard and from whom.
- For a promotion or transfer, keep the written request you made for the range.
- Record what happened after you declined, whether a withdrawn interview, a slower process or a lower offer.
Do not sign a release or a severance agreement while you are still working out what happened. And do not assume a posted range equals compliance with the statute.
Bring the Interview Question to a Free Consultation
Perhaps a Nevada employer or recruiter asked for your wage history. Perhaps nobody told you the range after your interview. Perhaps the employer set your pay from what you used to earn. If so, The Bourassa Law Group offers a free consultation. We go through the question, who asked it, which agency fits and which deadline is already running. Sometimes the same facts involve a serious physical injury on the job. The claim can then extend into a catastrophic injury case against a third party. Start through our contact page. Write the question down tonight, because the Nevada salary history ban rewards the applicant who kept the record.
This article is general information about Nevada law and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney client relationship. An unlawful question during hiring is easy to forget and hard to prove later, so write down what was asked while it is fresh.
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