Beginning January 1, jury duty will no longer mean unpaid time off for most Illinois employees. Under a new Illinois law, employers with more than 25 employees must pay employees their regular rate of pay for time spent on jury duty.
Illinois already requires employers to provide time off for jury service. Employers are also prohibited from discharging, threatening, intimidating, or coercing employees because of jury service.
Before now, however, Illinois law expressly provided that employers were not required to pay employees for time spent on jury duty. This new law changes that.
As originally introduced, the bill would have required all employers to pay employees their regular rate for jury service. Lawmakers later amended the bill to exempt employers with 25 or fewer employees. Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed the amended bill into law on July 31.
In the view of Illinois lawmakers, jury duty should not result in financial hardship for employees.
Illinois is not the first state to require employers to pay employees for jury service. However, other states have limited the obligation.
Connecticut, for example, requires employers to pay regular wages to full-time employees for the first five days of jury service. After that, the state pays jurors $50 a day. Connecticut also allows employers to seek relief from the payment requirement based on “extreme financial hardship.”
In Colorado, employers generally must pay employees their...
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