The COVID Project
The record
- Jurisdiction
- Illinois
- Level
- State
- Authority
- Workers' Occupational Diseases Act, 820 ILCS 310, as amended
- Issued
- 2020-06-05 June 5, 2020
- Effective
- 2020-06-05 (applies to diagnoses on or after March 9, 2020 and on or before December 31, 2020, as enacted) (read as 2020-06-05)
- End
- 2020-12-31 as enacted; extended to diagnoses through June 30, 2021 by Pub. Act 101-0653 (DUT-IL-012) (read as 2021-06-30)
- In force
- June 5, 2020 to June 30, 2021
- Quarters
- 2020 Q22020 Q32020 Q42021 Q12021 Q2
2020 Q22020 Q32020 Q42021 Q12021 Q22021 Q3
- Limitation types
- Workplace rulesStanding dutyOperating condition
- Addressees
- employers of first responders, health care workers, corrections officers and employees of every essential business under EO 2020-10 meeting the public-contact or fifteen-employee condition
- Character
- liability shield condition
- Collection
- Standing duties: Illinois DUT-IL
Operative words
the employer was engaging in and applying to the fullest extent possible or enforcing to the best of its ability industry-specific workplace sanitation, social distancing, and health and safety practices based on updated guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or Illinois Department of Public Health
Penalty
Liability for occupational-disease benefits under the Workers' Occupational Diseases Act unless the presumption is rebutted
What it required
For every 'COVID-19 first responder or front-line worker,' defined to include 'any individuals employed by essential businesses and operations as defined in Executive Order 2020-10' who were 'required by their employment to encounter members of the general public or to work in employment locations of more than 15 employees,' the exposure and contraction of COVID-19 'shall be rebuttably presumed to have arisen out of and in the course of' employment; the employer may rebut only by evidence such as fourteen consecutive days of remote work or leave, or that the employer applied the CDC or IDPH workplace sanitation, distancing and health and safety practices, or engineering and administrative controls and PPE, 'for at least 14 consecutive days prior to' the injury.
Retrieval noteIllinois enacted no general COVID-19 business liability shield. This Act is the State's liability instrument for employers, and it runs in the opposite direction from the shields of Texas, Georgia or Ohio: it presumes the employer's liability and lets the employer escape only by proving that it applied the CDC or IDPH protocols 'to the fullest extent possible.' The Act defines 'updated' guidance as 'the guidance in effect at least 14 days prior to the COVID-19 diagnosis,' which made the current CDC and IDPH guidance the moving legal standard for the whole essential workforce.