There was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks back. It seems that a number of companies around the country are looking for remote workers from every state in the union with the singular exception of Colorado, evidently the consequence of a state law passed in 2019 – the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act – that apparently no one foresaw.

Now, the concept of equal pay for equal work is not in itself particularly subversive, but, of course, for the details of the proposal. One such detail, and the one causing all the seismic disruption is the provision that employers publicly disclose all salary and benefit information in a job posting.

The Journal article explains: “To avoid having to disclose that information … some employers seeking remote workers nationwide are saying that those living in Colorado need not apply.” It continues with examples: “Across the internet, an array of job listings state the work can’t be done in Colorado. At Johnson & Johnson, roles recently posted for a commercial finance senior manager and a senior manager in operations include this caveat: “Work location is flexible if approved by the Company except that position may not be performed remotely from Colorado.” At commercial real-estate giant CBRE Group Inc., an ad for a project management director notes in bold: “This position may be performed remotely anywhere within the United States except the State of Colorado.””

Well. All of this has quite naturally gotten the law’s proponents in quite a tither. Their concern, mind you, is not the repercussions on the job market from the salary disclosure provision, but rather the chutzpah of these out-of-state companies. Already plans are being drawn to figure out some sort of legislative hammer that can be brought to bear on these incalcitrant businesses who have demonstrated the gall to stick with their policies and simply bypass a state which would seek to criminalize them for doing so.

This backlash-against-the-backlash is understandable – no one likes discovering that their political masterstroke actually causes some adverse side effects – but encounters a practical difficulty: a state legislature cannot make laws for another state. Those businesses that are located outside Colorado are simply not liable to whatever new penalty might be conjured up to try and force them to accept applications from Colorado.

Now, granted, that is also an argument against putting those sorts of disclaimers on the job postings in the first place. If the companies are not located on Colorado soil, they really aren’t subject to Colorado law. The state could hoot and holler all they wish, but there would be little they could do if those companies just went about their business and posted jobs without adhering to Colorado’s new requirements.

So why bother including the “except Colorado” disclaimer in the first place? That merely goes to illustrate the confusion that reigns when all these new rules and mandates are piled on the business sector, each and every year. If you are a business in Connecticut or Florida looking for remote workers for whatever it is you do, chances are you are far more focused on whatever it is you do than on deciphering new laws in each state. So when one comes up saying you must do something you are not, for whatever reason, prepared to do in a particular state, best to just say the hell with it and avoid that state altogether, and avert what might potentially cause you a bigger legal or financial headache.

And of course there could be plenty of reasons why an employer may choose not to post salary information ahead of an offer of employment, reasons that do not include the clearly presumed one: that these are purely evil entities simply looking for ways to cheat their workers. Compensation is, after all, a contract between an employer and an employee, and subject to a myriad of individuated circumstances, none of which are – or ought to be – the government’s business.

How prevalent is this phenomenon of courting remote workers from everywhere but the Centennial State? That’s tough to say… the Department of Labor says it’s not all that many in the grand scheme; on the other hand it is enough to generate media attention and a website tracking it. It is difficult to quantify the cost of our quest for perfect equity. But the fact that it is happening in the first place ought to raise the alarum that there is a schism between the laws being passed and the reality which they impact. And that that impact is felt most keenly by those meant to be helped.