Executive Summary: Illinois employers should be aware that they will likely be subject to liability under amendments to the Illinois Gender Violence Act (GVA) proposed by recent legislation. HB1363 is one of a number of bills that recently passed both houses of the Illinois Legislature and should soon be sent to the governor for signature. We will be publishing an Alert discussing the other bills and their potential impact on Illinois employers, but this Alert focuses on HB1363, which will make the GVA specifically applicable to employers.

The GVA allows a person who has been the victim of gender-related violence to sue the person who committed the act of violence and seek various damages. HB1363 amends the GVA to now specifically apply it to employers under certain (broad) circumstances. HB1363 went through multiple iterations, including amendments that could not be grammatically parsed to determine exactly when the amendments would possibly apply. Importantly, the amendments provide a huge new door for dilatory plaintiffs to walk right through to raise certain claims of sexual harassment long after well-established federal and state deadlines.

The GVA amendment provides the following, which we are quoting exactly because there is no other way to parse the language:

Section 11. (a) An employer is only liable for gender-related violence committed in the workplace by an employee or agent of the employer when the interaction giving rise to the gender-related violence arises...

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