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Last month, Massachusetts made headlines by becoming the first state in the nation to ban employers from asking job applicants about salary history, which it did in the hopes of closing the nation’s persistent gender wage gap. Now, D.C. could become the next major jurisdiction to do so.

At-large Councilmember David Grosso introduced the Fair Wage Amendment Act of 2016 to wide support yesterday—11 of the 13 councilmembers are listed as cosponsors. It prohibits employers from screening applicants based on their wage history or asking about salary history prior to making an offer.

“If you’re hiring someone to do a job, you should pay them for what you think that job is worth, not how little you can get away with paying them,” Grosso tells DCist. The bill amends a 2014 law, which made it illegal for employers to prohibit employees from discussing their wages.

While D.C. has historically had one of the lowest pay wage gaps in the nation, it remains stark: women make 90 cents to the dollar for men, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families (other analyses put the figure even lower, from 86 cents down to 78 cents). Women of color have it much worse, with African American women paid 56 cents and Latinas 50 cents to every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men.

To put it another way, the National Women’s Law Center estimated that if the wage gap persisted at 2014 levels, it would cost women in the District an average of $288,560 over a 40-year career, in comparison to a man. For African American women, that figure rises to nearly $1.6 million; it would cost Latina women $1.78 million—the largest lifetime pay gap in the country between women of color and white men.

Other reports, including one from the Economic Policy Institute, show that the pay gap starts earlier than many people assume—and persists even in the same career fields, according to a 2015 AAUW study of workers a year after graduating from college.

By banning employers from asking about salary history, the hope is that historically low wages won’t plague women and minorities throughout their careers.

“Because many employers set wages based on an applicant’s previous salary, workers from historically disadvantaged groups often start out behind their white male counterparts in salary negotiations and never catch up,” D.C.’s Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton said in a statement last week, announcing that she had introduced a national version of what Grosso is proposing (co-introduced with representatives Rosa DeLauro, D-CT; Jerrold Nadler, D-NY; and Jackie Speier, D-CA). Should it pass, the Department of Labor could fine business up to $10,000 for asking a prospective employee about their salary history before making an offer.

Grosso went ahead and introduced the local version “knowing that Congress will probably move more slowly on it,” he said, charitably. New York City and New Jersey lawmakers have also introduced a bills to bar employers from asking about past wages. And the California legislature already passed a law to do so, but it was vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown; another bill that contains some of the same language is back on his desk.

While gender discrimination is illegal, it remains both pervasive and difficult to prove. Several states offer additional protections—like Maryland’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Act of 2016 and a 2015 expansion of equal pay laws in New York—but Massachusetts has been heralded as a “national leader” on the issue, thanks in part to the provision that prohibits employers from asking about salary history.

In D.C., the proposed ban comes amid a flurry over other proposed laws that address workplace issues, including a recent deal to increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2020. “It fits into the overall question of how do we treat everybody with respect and equally in the city,” Grosso says.

High on the list is a pioneering paid family leave law, which would guarantee up to 12 weeks of paid leave for family and medical issues. “I’m heartened that [D.C. Council Chairman Phil] Mendelson has said several times publicly in the past few days that family leave is his number one priority for the committee’s work between now and the end of the year,” Grosso says.

The Council also, however, tabled a bill to require advanced notice for work schedules yesterday, in part over concerns about burdening businesses with multiple new costs at once. And shepherding a law prohibiting salary inquiries through the Council in the waning months of this legislative session would be a tall order. But it may well come up for a hearing by the end of the year, and that’s the first step.

Fair Wage Amendment Act of 2016 by Rachel Sadon on Scribd

This post has been updated with information about similar proposals in California and New Jersey.