Summary: Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker recently signed legislation impacting employers with Illinois employees in connection with paid leave and workplace accommodation developments, outlined below:
- Paid leave for military funeral honors detail leave, effective August 1, 2025, and
- Paid lactation breaks for nursing mothers, effective January 1, 2026
Read on for more information and next steps for employers.
Illinois Military Funeral Honors Detail Leave, Effective Now
On August 1, 2025, Governor Pritzker signed an amendment to the Family Military Leave Act[1], requiring Illinois employers with at least 51 employees to provide paid leave for eligible employees participating in military funeral honors detail, effective August 1, 2025.
Eligible Employees: Employees are eligible if they have been employed by the same employer for at least 12 months, have worked for at least 1,250 hours during the 12-month period before the leave, and are either:
- A retired or active member of the U.S. armed forces (including reserves and the Illinois National Guard); or
- An authorized provider[2] or a registered member of an authorized provider, including a member of a veterans service organization.
Leave Use & Limits: Military funeral honors detail is an honor guard detail provided under federal law and regulations for the funeral of any veteran. The funeral honors detail performs a ceremony that includes folding a U.S. flag, presenting the flag to the veteran’s family, and playing “Taps.”
Eligible employees may take up to 8 hours of paid leave per calendar month to participate in a military funeral honors detail, up to a total of 40 hours of paid leave per calendar year, or more if authorized by their employer or provided for in a collective bargaining agreement.
Employees must be paid at their regular rate of pay when taking military funeral honors detail leave.
Interaction with Other Leave: Employees cannot be required to use or exhaust any other leave (such as sick, vacation, disability, personal, or compensatory leave) before taking military funeral honors detail leave.
Notice: Employees must give reasonable, practicable notice of this leave. Employers may request the official notice of the detail or confirmation of the employee’s participation from the veterans service organization.
Exception for Certain Congregate Care Facilities: An employer may deny a request for military funeral honors detail leave if granting the leave at a congregate care facility providing 24/7 care (including an assisted living or nursing home facility) would reduce staffing levels below the established minimum or impair safe facility operations.[3]
Employer Next Steps
Given the August 1, 2025 effective date of the new military funeral honors detail paid leave mandate, employers with employees in Illinois are advised to take the following steps now to ensure compliance:
- Review and update, as necessary, leave policies and procedures
- Update payroll systems to account for military funeral honors detail leave
- Train Human Resources team members and other supervisory employees, as well as communicate to employees
- Liaise with employment/labor counsel to determine how this new Illinois state paid leave mandate interacts with employees’ rights to unpaid leave to perform funeral honors duty under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA)
Illinois Paid Lactation Breaks in 2026
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker also recently signed legislation amending the Illinois Nursing Mothers in the Workplace Act, requiring employers to provide paid break time for nursing mothers in 2026.
Starting January 1, 2026, employers must compensate employees at their regular rate of compensation during lactation breaks. Additionally, employers cannot require employees to use paid leave during the break time or reduce the employee’s compensation during the break time in any other manner.
Currently, the Illinois Nursing Mothers in the Workplace Act requires employers with five or more employees to provide reasonable unpaid break time for employees to express breast milk for one year after the child's birth, unless doing so creates undue hardship (defined below) for the employer. The break time may run concurrently with any break time already provided to the employee. Furthermore, employers must make reasonable efforts to provide a room or other location, in close proximity to the work area, other than a toilet stall, where an employee can express milk in privacy.
"Undue hardship" is defined under the Illinois Human Rights Law as "an action that is prohibitively expensive or disruptive" when considered in light of certain factors including the nature and cost of the accommodation needed, the overall financial resources of the facility, the number of persons employed at the facility, the effect on expenses and resources, the overall financial resources and size of the employer, and the type of employer operation, including the composition, structure, and functions of the workforce.
This section of the Illinois Human Rights Law continues on to clarify that an employer has the burden of proving undue hardship, and the fact that an employer provides or would be required to provide a similar accommodation to similarly situated employees creates a rebuttable presumption that the accommodation does not impose an undue hardship on the employer.
Employer Next Steps
Ahead of the January 1, 2026 effective date for this new paid lactation breaks mandate, employers with employees in Illinois are advised to take the following steps to ensure compliance:
- Review and update, as necessary, policies and procedures related to lactation accommodations
- Update payroll systems to ensure proper payment of lactation breaks
- Train Human Resources team members and other supervisory employees on this recent development, as well as communicate to employees
Illinois joins New York, Minnesota, and Georgia, as well as Washington in 2027, in this growing trend requiring employers to provide paid lactation breaks for employees.
On a federal level, employers must provide reasonable break time for most employees to express breast milk for their nursing child under the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act (PUMP Act). Click here for a Risk Strategies article to refresh your knowledge of PUMP Act requirements.
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[1] And changed the name to the Military Leave Act.
[2] "Authorized provider" means an individual or group recognized by the armed forces, who are not service members or employees of the United States government and who augment the uniformed members of a military funeral honors detail, and may include veterans service organizations, trained volunteers of the Reserve Officer Training Corps, and/or honor guards.
[3] Unless it violates the terms of a collective bargaining agreement.
