Illegal interview questions
Some interview questions are barred outright by statute; most of the rest reveal a protected trait and can become evidence in a discrimination claim. Below: 13 legal questions, each paired with the risky one it retires, the legal basis, and a primary source. General guidance for US employers, not legal advice — state and city rules vary.
All 13 questions
Legal questions to ask instead of the classic illegal ones
- 01This role involves serving alcohol, and state law sets a minimum age for servers. Can you confirm you meet that requirement?
- 02Are you legally authorized to work in the United States, and will you need visa sponsorship now or in the future?
- 03You've seen the essential functions in the job description. Can you perform them, with or without a reasonable accommodation?
- 04This role carries an on-call week roughly once a month and two overnight trips a quarter. Does that work for you?
- 05The schedule includes rotating weekends and retail blackout dates from Black Friday through Christmas Eve. Can you commit to it?
Legal ways to ask candidates about AI
- 06Which AI tools do you actually use day to day, and for which tasks?
- 07What's the newest AI tool you've adopted for work, and how did you get productive with it?
- 08If you used an AI assistant to prepare your application or for this conversation, how did you use it?
- 09What reservations, if any, do you have about using AI at work, and how do you handle them on the job?
Legal questions for background checks, pay, and attendance
- 10Any offer we make is contingent on a background check scoped to the role. What questions do you have about that process?
- 11What salary range would make this move worthwhile for you?
- 12This role handles customer email in written English all day. How would you rate your written English — and would you be open to a short writing sample?
- 13Our attendance standard is four fixed shifts a week, with schedules posted six weeks ahead. Is there anything about that standard that wouldn't work?
Questions 1–5
Legal questions to ask instead of the classic illegal ones
This role involves serving alcohol, and state law sets a minimum age for servers. Can you confirm you meet that requirement?
Ask this instead of "How old are you?" or "What year were you born?" — direct age questions create ADEA exposure for candidates 40 and over. A legal minimum tied to the role is the only age fact hiring needs.
What to look for
- A one-word confirmation — that's all this question needs to produce.
- Any hesitation that suggests a documentation issue to resolve at offer stage, not mid-interview.
- The candidate doesn't feel compelled to state their actual age — and if they volunteer it, it stays out of your notes.
Example answerRed flags
Example answer
Yes — I'm over the minimum, and I hold a current responsible-beverage-service certification from my last serving job at a sports bar, so I can pour from day one.
Red flags
- Following up with "So how old are you exactly?" once the requirement is confirmed.
- "You look young — are you sure?" — commenting on apparent age at all.
- Asking for a birth date or graduation year on the spot to verify.
Sources: EEOC: Age discrimination · EEOC: Prohibited practices
Are you legally authorized to work in the United States, and will you need visa sponsorship now or in the future?
Ask this instead of "Are you a US citizen?" or "Where are you from?" — citizenship and origin questions risk Title VII national-origin claims and INA anti-discrimination violations. Work authorization and sponsorship needs are the lawful facts.
What to look for
- A clear yes or no on authorization, without you needing to probe further.
- A clear yes or no on future sponsorship need — these are designed as yes/no screening questions, so don't press for more.
- Questions back about your sponsorship policy; informed candidates ask.
Example answerRed flags
Example answer
Yes, I'm authorized to work in the US, and I will need sponsorship in the future — H-1B, in my case. Happy to put the details in front of your immigration counsel at the offer stage.
Red flags
- "Where's your accent from?" or "Were you born here?" — origin small talk is the classic slip.
- Asking to see a green card or passport in the interview — document checks belong to the I-9 at hire.
- Treating "authorized with future sponsorship needs" as an automatic no without checking your own policy.
Sources: DOJ: Immigrant & Employee Rights (INA) · DOJ IER: Authorization & sponsorship questions · EEOC: National origin discrimination
You've seen the essential functions in the job description. Can you perform them, with or without a reasonable accommodation?
Ask this instead of "Do you have any disabilities or health conditions?" — pre-offer disability inquiries are expressly barred by the ADA. The essential-functions question is the version the statute explicitly permits, and it produces a better answer.
What to look for
- Engagement with the actual functions — lifting, shifts, screen time — not a generic yes.
- If an accommodation comes up, it's framed around performing the job, and you route the details to HR rather than digging.
- Clarifying questions about what the job really involves day to day.
Example answerRed flags
Example answer
Yes. I read the posting — warehouse scanning, 45-pound lifts, ten-hour shifts. I've done all three at my current distribution center for two years. I use a standard back support for the heavy lifts, which my current employer supplies anyway.
Red flags
- "What happened to your hand?" — asking about visible conditions, medications, or past surgeries.
- Probing an accommodation mention for a diagnosis instead of moving on.
- Asking about workers' comp claims or medical leave history at a previous employer.
Sources: EEOC: Pre-employment medical inquiries · EEOC: Disability discrimination
This role carries an on-call week roughly once a month and two overnight trips a quarter. Does that work for you?
Ask this instead of "Do you have kids?", "Who handles childcare?", or "Are you pregnant?" — family-status probing invites Title VII and Pregnancy Discrimination Act claims. State the role's real demands and let the candidate assess them.
What to look for
- An answer about the stated demands, not a tour of their personal life.
- Practical questions back — on-call compensation, how much notice trips come with.
- A yes with the logistics visibly thought through, versus a reflexive yes.
Example answerRed flags
Example answer
Yes. I've carried a one-week-in-four on-call rotation for two years and my average page response is under ten minutes. For the trips, two weeks' notice on dates is all I need to be fully available.
Red flags
- "Who watches your kids when you travel?" — converting a schedule answer into a family inquiry.
- Asking a visibly pregnant candidate about due dates or leave plans.
- "Married? Kids?" framed as getting-to-know-you small talk — intent doesn't cure it.
Sources: EEOC: Pregnancy discrimination · EEOC: Marital status & children inquiries
The schedule includes rotating weekends and retail blackout dates from Black Friday through Christmas Eve. Can you commit to it?
Ask this instead of "What religion are you?" or "Which holidays do you observe?" — religious probing is Title VII territory. Describe the actual schedule; if a candidate requests a religious accommodation, evaluate it rather than screening them out.
What to look for
- A direct commitment, or a specific constraint raised now instead of discovered in week one.
- Evidence they registered the blackout dates rather than glossing past them.
- Constraints framed as a request you can evaluate, with a proposed trade.
Example answerRed flags
Example answer
Yes, with one flag: I don't work Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. At my last two retail jobs I traded for every Sunday and every holiday shift instead — my last manager said it made December staffing easier, not harder.
Red flags
- "Is that a religious thing?" as a follow-up to a scheduling constraint.
- Asking which holidays they observe or where they worship.
- Rejecting a candidate over one accommodable constraint without ever assessing undue hardship.
Sources: EEOC: Religious discrimination
Questions 6–9
Legal ways to ask candidates about AI
2026 · AIWhich AI tools do you actually use day to day, and for which tasks?
Ask this instead of "Can someone your age keep up with AI?" — framing tool fluency around age or generation creates ADEA exposure. A neutral usage question measures the actual skill across every candidate the same way.
What to look for
- Named tools attached to named tasks, not a recited list of logos.
- Honest boundaries — tasks where the tools underperform and they've stopped using them.
- The same question works identically for a 24-year-old and a 60-year-old; their answers are comparable.
Example answerRed flags
Example answer
Three, honestly. An LLM drafts my customer follow-up emails from call notes — I edit every one. A meeting assistant handles transcription. And I use a spreadsheet copilot for formula debugging. I tried AI for forecasting and dropped it; it invented trends our data didn't support.
Red flags
- "You're probably more up to speed on this stuff than the older folks here" — generation talk in either direction.
- "Digital native" as a compliment or a filter — it's an age proxy.
- Scoring candidates down for learning AI recently rather than assessing what they can do now.
Sources: EEOC: Age discrimination
What's the newest AI tool you've adopted for work, and how did you get productive with it?
Ask this instead of "When did you graduate?" — graduation year is a textbook age proxy that invites ADEA scrutiny. How someone picked up their newest AI tool reveals learning speed without dating anyone's diploma.
What to look for
- A recent, specific adoption story with a timeline measured in days or weeks.
- A deliberate method — sandboxed on low-stakes work first, compared output against their own.
- What they'd tell a colleague adopting the same tool; teaching reveals depth.
Example answerRed flags
Example answer
A coding assistant, about four months ago. I gave it a week of throwaway scripts before letting it near production work, and kept a note of every wrong answer it gave me. By week three it was writing my test scaffolding — that alone saves me two hours a week.
Red flags
- Pivoting from the tool story to "so when did you finish school?"
- "Back in your day this was all manual, right?" — era-anchoring the candidate's experience.
- Assuming the answer based on the candidate's apparent age instead of asking everyone.
Sources: EEOC: Age discrimination · EEOC: Prohibited practices
If you used an AI assistant to prepare your application or for this conversation, how did you use it?
Ask this openly instead of hunting for hidden AI use — and never follow up into whether a candidate's tools are assistive technology for a condition, which crosses into ADA-barred pre-offer disability inquiry.
What to look for
- A candid answer — the question rewards honesty, and evasion here predicts evasion later.
- A line they can articulate: drafted with AI versus represented as their own thinking.
- Their prep still contains verifiable personal substance — real projects, real numbers.
Example answerRed flags
Example answer
I did. I fed the job posting to an assistant and had it grill me with likely questions — my answers, its questions. It also caught that my resume buried the inventory-reduction number you asked about earlier. The stories are mine; the rehearsal partner was a bot.
Red flags
- Following an honest answer with "Do you need tools like that because of a condition?"
- Treating disclosed AI prep as cheating while your own pipeline runs AI screening.
- Asking only candidates who seem "suspiciously polished" — selective scrutiny is where bias lives.
What reservations, if any, do you have about using AI at work, and how do you handle them on the job?
Ask this instead of "Is your reluctance about AI a religious thing?" — probing whether a candidate's hesitation is faith-based invites Title VII claims. The neutral version surfaces judgment about risk and quality, which is what you wanted.
What to look for
- Reservations grounded in work outcomes — accuracy, client confidentiality, skill atrophy.
- A working compromise: they use the tools where safe despite the reservations.
- No reservations is also an answer — probe whether they've thought about failure modes at all.
Example answerRed flags
Example answer
Two real ones. I won't paste client financials into consumer tools — I use our approved instance only. And I worry about my own skills going soft, so once a month I do a full analysis by hand and check the model against it. Twice the model missed something material.
Red flags
- "Is that an ethical or religious objection?" — the basis of a reservation is not your business.
- Marking down any hesitation as "resistance to change" without hearing the reasoning.
- Probing personal beliefs about AI rather than on-the-job behavior with it.
Sources: EEOC: Religious discrimination
Questions 10–13
Legal questions for background checks, pay, and attendance
Any offer we make is contingent on a background check scoped to the role. What questions do you have about that process?
Ask this instead of "Have you ever been arrested?" — EEOC guidance treats arrest-record screening as a Title VII disparate-impact risk, and fair-chance laws like New York City's and California's move conviction questions past the conditional offer.
What to look for
- Reasonable process questions: what's checked, who sees the report, how long it takes.
- Nothing else gets evaluated — comfort, hesitation, or demeanor about the check never enters your notes.
- No criminal-history detail — and if any is volunteered, it stays out of your notes and the conversation moves on.
Example answerRed flags
Example answer
No concerns — I've cleared checks at my last two employers. Two questions, though: is the check scoped to this role, and who sees the report? I ask because a previous employer shared results more widely than I was comfortable with.
Red flags
- "Ever been in trouble with the law?" — inviting criminal history into the interview itself.
- Exploring history a candidate volunteers instead of deferring it — fair-chance jurisdictions instruct you not to consider it pre-offer.
- Asking about arrests, dismissed charges, or sealed and expunged records.
Sources: EEOC: Arrest & conviction records guidance · NYC CCHR: Fair Chance Act guidance · California Gov. Code §12952
What salary range would make this move worthwhile for you?
Ask this instead of "What are you currently making?" — salary-history questions are banned outright in many states and cities, California and New York City among them. Expectations sidestep the bans and are more useful anyway.
What to look for
- A range grounded in the role and local market, stated without apology.
- Research behind the number — they can say where the range comes from.
- Composure in the negotiation moment; it predicts how they'll handle pressure with clients.
Example answerRed flags
Example answer
Based on the posting and what this role pays across the metro, I'm targeting $72–80k base. The lower end works if the bonus structure is real — I'd want to see how the last two cohorts of reps actually paid out before anchoring on it.
Red flags
- "Just ballpark your current comp for me" — the ban covers casual phrasings too.
- Asking for a W-2 or pay stub to "verify" compensation.
- Pressing after a candidate declines to share history in a ban jurisdiction.
Sources: California Labor Code §432.3 · NYC CCHR: Salary history ban
This role handles customer email in written English all day. How would you rate your written English — and would you be open to a short writing sample?
Ask this instead of "What's your first language?" or "Where's that accent from?" — both are national-origin territory under Title VII. A fluency requirement is lawful only when the job genuinely needs it, so test the skill directly.
What to look for
- An honest self-assessment that separates written from spoken fluency, matched to the job's real channel.
- Willingness to demonstrate rather than just claim — strong candidates welcome the sample.
- Evidence from past work: volumes, QA scores, the kinds of messages they handled.
Example answerRed flags
Example answer
Written English is my strongest channel — I closed about 40 tickets a day at my last job, all in English, with a 96% QA score on tone and clarity. Happy to do the sample right now; give me an angry customer and fifteen minutes.
Red flags
- "Your English is so good — where are you from?" — the compliment can evidence national-origin bias.
- Requiring English fluency for a role with no customer contact, because it's on the standard template.
- Treating an accent as a communication problem when comprehension is fine.
Sources: EEOC: National origin discrimination · EEOC: National origin FAQs (fluency & accent)
Our attendance standard is four fixed shifts a week, with schedules posted six weeks ahead. Is there anything about that standard that wouldn't work?
Ask this instead of "How many sick days did you take last year?" or "Does anything run in your family?" — sick-leave probing risks ADA claims and family medical history requests violate GINA. State the standard, not the medical story.
What to look for
- Engagement with the stated standard — shift count, posting lead time — rather than a hollow yes.
- Conflicts raised now and specifically, while there's still room to solve them.
- No over-disclosure; if medical detail spills out anyway, steer back to the requirement and keep it out of your notes.
Example answerRed flags
Example answer
The standard works. I held 98% attendance over two years at my current plant — my supervisor posts it on the line board, so it's easy to verify. Six weeks of schedule visibility is actually better than what I have now, where shifts drop 48 hours out.
Red flags
- "You'd tell us if you had any health conditions, right?" — an ADA violation phrased as reassurance.
- Asking why they used sick leave or FMLA at a previous employer.
- Any question about a relative's health, hereditary conditions, or cause of death.
Sources: EEOC: Genetic information (GINA) · EEOC: Pre-employment medical inquiries
Scoring rubric
| Score | Evidence anchor |
|---|---|
| 1 | No usable evidence on the skills questions — AI use, writing, working methods. Requirement answers (authorization, accommodation, background, pay, scheduling) never count toward any score, so the interview produced nothing gradable. |
| 2 | Skills answers are generic — tools without tasks, claims without checkable specifics — and every concrete detail about the work needs prompting. |
| 3 | Solid on the skills questions: named tools tied to named tasks, honest about where the tools fail, and willing to demonstrate — a writing sample on the spot. |
| 4 | Skills evidence is specific and verifiable — QA scores, adoption stories, output the interviewer can check — with clear judgment about when not to use a tool. |
| 5 | Outstanding, checkable skills evidence — and only that: requirement answers stay brief, a yes is a yes, and no anchor on this rubric rewards a candidate for volunteering more. |
Frequently asked questions
What questions are illegal to ask in an interview?
Three tiers: expressly barred — pre-offer disability and family-medical-history inquiries, plus salary-history and conviction questions where local law bans them; protected-trait questions — age, origin, religion, pregnancy — that become discrimination evidence; and stricter state or city rules on top.
Are illegal job interview questions actually against the law?
Some are directly barred: GINA prohibits family-medical-history requests, and many jurisdictions ban salary-history and pre-offer conviction questions. The rest aren't crimes to ask — they're evidence, and a discrimination claim built on your own interview notes is hard to defend.
Is there a full list of illegal questions to ask in an interview?
No single federal list exists. The reliable test: if a question reveals a protected characteristic and isn't tied to an essential job requirement, don't ask it. EEOC guidance sets the federal floor; state and city law add more.
What are illegal interview questions when AI runs part of the hiring process?
The same protected-trait rules apply when software asks or scores the question — EEOC guidance holds employers responsible for discriminatory outcomes from hiring tools, and New York City's Local Law 144 adds bias-audit and notice duties for covered automated decision tools.
How do you stop interviewers from asking illegal questions?
A fixed script supports training by cutting improvised questions — violations are often small talk, not policy. Structured interviews ask every candidate the same approved questions; Kira runs that first-round script by voice and records every exchange, so you can audit what was actually asked.