The Illinois General Assembly has been laser-focused on expanding workplace protections and benefits for employees in recent years — from amending the Illinois Human Rights Act to bar discrimination against employees acting as family caregivers to strengthening employees’ rights to raise concerns about workplace conditions, wages, or safety concerns under amendments to the Illinois Workplace Transparency Act. Next up: (some) paid jury duty.
On July 31, 2026, Governor JB Pritzker’s signed HB 4844 into law. While the bill only makes a minor change to the Section 4.1 of the Illinois Jury Act and Section 10.1 of the Illinois Jury Commission Act (the Statutes), the change will likely have major impacts on larger employers when their Illinois-based employees are called for jury service.
Effective January 1, 2027, HB 4844 requires employers with over 25 employees (Covered Employers) to compensate employees at their regular rate of pay for time spent performing jury duty. Before the amendments, Illinois employers — regardless of size — were generally required to provide unpaid “time off” for jury duty and were prohibited from retaliating against employees from taking time off to do so.
With only a few months left in 2026, Covered Employers should start taking steps now to ensure they have the proper procedures in place to begin providing and tracking paid leave to employees performing jury service. Those steps should include, for example, the following:
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