A recent ruling by the Supreme Court of Illinois that the state’s minimum wage law does not incorporate the federal Portal-to-Portal Act’s (PPA) exclusion for “preliminary or postliminary” employee activities could open the door to a wave of new wage-and-hour lawsuits by employees over time spent undergoing health or security screenings or other required activities before and after their shifts.

Quick Hits

• The Illinois Supreme Court held that Illinois’s Minimum Wage Law does not adopt federal exclusions for preliminary and postliminary activities.
• The ruling came in a certified question from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and revived a class of employees’ state wage-and-hour claims over mandatory pre-shift COVID-19 screenings.
• The ruling highlights a trend of state courts holding that their states’ wage-and-hour laws do not necessarily follow the federal understanding of compensable time.

On March 19, 2026, the Illinois Supreme Court issued a decision answering a certified question from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals concerning whether Section 4a of the Illinois Minimum Wage Law (IMWL) incorporates the PPA’s exclusion from compensation for activities that are “preliminary to or postliminary to [an employee’s] said principal activity or principal activities.”

Pre-Shift COVID-19 Screenings

In Johnson, a group of employees filed a class action alleging they were not compensated for mandatory pre-shift COVID-19 screenings, which they claimed lasted...

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