I won't say it was lucky because it was an ultimatum, which I was happy to enforce either way. It would be lucky if I was banking on the raise.

Pay transparency for wage brackets doesn't mean they can't approve individual raises. The wage bracket for my job is realistically $50-175k. It may be more of a problem if you're looking for a job with a small bracket of acceptable pay, but a company should be able to justify wages for top earners. You can easily tell people that they would need to demonstrate more skills and experience to earn higher amounts. Maybe you'd argue this opens them up to suits but I say a competent HR department would be able to demonstrate that pay is apportioned by actual metrics.

If it isn't then that smacks of discrimination against lower earning employees or nepotism/favoritsm.

I got lucky that I negotiated a raise? No, I demanded it and the threat of me leaving for more money made them give me a raise. It was a real threat that I could easily follow-up on even today.

And there is no one else with my job title in this market for my company. I cover the entire PNW. Even if there was someone else they can't be sued for negotiating a raise with me.

Your employer already uses industry wide hiring tools that have salary ranges and caps for positions by job title. Yes this can flatten wages, but it also gives people a better idea of what is out there and potentially more room to bargain.

I used a job posting with pay info (it was not required by law at the time) as evidence of need for a pay raise and was given a ~18% raise.

What sort of tools are there, names would be great especially if it's possible to access them as a private person. I use the OOH and what paltry other information I can find.