Two new obligations for Illinois businesses, with two different deadlines

Jury duty pay, effective January 1, 2027

HB 4844 requires employers with more than 25 employees to compensate workers at their full rate of pay while serving on a jury. Businesses at or below 25 employees are exempt.

Illinois law already prohibited penalizing an employee for jury service. This goes further, converting what most employers treated as unpaid leave into a paid obligation.

The budgeting concern is not the average case. Most jury service is short. The exposure is the long trial, where an employee can be out for weeks at full pay while you also cover the work. That is uncommon and it is not rare enough to ignore, particularly for a business near the 25-employee line where a single absence is felt immediately.

Three things are worth doing before January 2027. Confirm how you count employees against the threshold, since businesses fluctuating around 25 need to know which side they are on. Update the handbook, because most Illinois handbooks currently describe jury duty as unpaid or as something an employee covers with accrued time. And decide how this interacts with paid time off, so that an employee is not asked to spend vacation on service you are now required to pay for.

Cash acceptance, effective January 1, 2028

HB 4592 requires retailers that employ someone to process in-person consumer transactions to accept cash on purchases under $500, in bills up to $20. Violations carry fines.

The exemptions matter as much as the rule. Reported exclusions cover self-checkout machines, overnight sales, situations where the business has low cash reserves, membership-only businesses, and purchases made by phone or over the internet.

The businesses affected are the ones that went cashless deliberately: restaurants, coffee shops, quick-service retail, venues that decided card-only was faster, safer, and cheaper than handling currency. Going back means a till, a change supply, a deposit routine, and the theft exposure those choices were partly meant to avoid.

You have until 2028, which is enough time to plan rather than scramble, and enough time to forget. The concrete question for an affected business is whether its exemption is solid. "We use self-checkout" and "we are membership-only" are meaningfully different from "we would rather not," and the difference will be defined by the statute and any rules under it.

Why the dates are the point

These were signed the same day and are frequently reported together, which invites the assumption that they arrive together. They do not. Jury duty pay lands January 1, 2027. Cash acceptance lands January 1, 2028. A business that prepares for both at once will be early on one and, more importantly, a business that hears about both in 2027 may assume it has another year on the one that has already taken effect.

A word on how to use this note

These summaries come from the signing announcements and the reporting around them. Before you change a policy or budget around either, the enrolled bill is what governs, including its definitions, its exemptions, and any implementing rules that follow. Thresholds and carve-outs described in press coverage are frequently simplified, and the details are exactly what determines whether a given business is covered.