If you've ever gotten a jury summons and quietly panicked about the paycheck you'd miss, Illinois just gave you some good news.
On July 31, 2026, Governor JB Pritzker signed House Bill 4844 into law, and it changes something that's frustrated jurors for years: getting paid while you serve. The law took effect immediately.
What the law actually does
Before this bill, Illinois protected your job while you served on a jury — your employer couldn't fire you or punish you for showing up when summoned. But nothing required them to actually pay you for the time you missed. Depending on where you worked, you either burned vacation days, went unpaid, or lived off the county's modest juror fee (often just $25 to $50 a day—which might not even cover parking in Chicago).
HB 4844 changes that. It amends the Illinois Jury Act and the Jury Commission Act to require employers to pay employees their regular rate of pay for the time they spend on jury duty — no more choosing between civic duty and your paycheck.
Who has to pay
The law applies to employers with more than 25 employees. If you work for a business with 25 or fewer employees, this new requirement doesn't apply to your employer — that carve-out was added through an amendment as the bill moved through the legislature, likely to ease the burden on small businesses.
So if you work at a mid-sized or large company, your employer is now on the hook to pay you your normal wages for the days you're serving, whether that's for jury selection or the trial itself.
Why it matters
Jury duty is one of the few things almost every eligible adult in the country might be called on to do, and it's a cornerstone of how our justice system works. But it's long been an unfunded mandate for regular people — you're compelled to show up, yet historically had little guarantee you wouldn't lose money doing it. That reality has led plenty of people to try to dodge jury summonses altogether, or to view jury service as more of a burden than a civic responsibility.
By requiring full pay, Illinois is removing one of the biggest practical disincentives to serving. The hope is that more people will show up, participate, and take the process seriously — which ultimately means more representative juries and a justice system that works better for everyone.
The bottom line
If you're an Illinois employee at a company with more than 25 workers, you can now serve on a jury without worrying about a hit to your paycheck. It's a small but meaningful shift — one that treats jury duty less like an inconvenience you have to absorb the cost of, and more like the essential public service it actually is.