Lululemon store leaders face new Virginia and Maine pay-transparency rules

Lululemon store managers in Virginia had to start putting wage or salary ranges into internal and external job postings on July 1, and they also had to stop asking applicants for salary history during the application or interview process. The change reaches beyond outside hiring: Virginia’s statute also applies to promotions and transfers, which means the language used for open assistant manager roles, key leader moves and other internal opportunities now carries legal weight.

The Virginia Department of Labor and Industry has said that all job postings and hiring advertisements in the state must include a wage or salary range, and the Virginia General Assembly’s law bars employers from seeking or relying on a prospective employee’s wage history. The statute includes a cause of action and a civil penalty framework, raising the stakes for any store that keeps using an old posting template or a manager script that still asks what a candidate made elsewhere.

That creates an immediate operational task for Lululemon leaders on the sales floor. Educators who step into interviews, assistant store managers who help screen candidates and store managers who discuss open roles need the same answer every time: a posted range, no salary-history questions and no improvised promises about what pay might be if a candidate pushes for more. If one version appears in a posting and another comes out in the interview, the inconsistency is not just messy. It can become evidence that a store has not aligned its hiring process with the law.

Maine is next. Gov. Janet Mills signed the state’s pay-transparency bill on April 24, 2026, and it takes effect July 29, 2026. The law applies to employers with 10 or more employees and requires a prospective range of pay in job postings, including postings made directly by the employer or through a third party. It also requires employers, upon an employee’s request, to disclose the range of pay for the position the employee holds.

For retail teams that recruit across states, the fix is straightforward but not optional: update job-posting templates, scrub salary-history questions from application forms and make sure interview training matches the law, not the old company script. That matters in a brand built on polished culture and internal mobility, where pay conversations move quickly between educators, key leaders and store managers. In Virginia and soon Maine, the fastest path to exposure is leaving the old language in place.