On March 19, 2026, the Illinois Supreme Court answered “no” to the following question certified by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in a pending class action case against Amazon for alleged unpaid overtime wages under Illinois’ Minimum Wage Law:
Does [the Illinois Minimum Wage Law] incorporate the exclusion from compensation for employee activities that are preliminary or postliminary to their principal activities, as provided under the federal Portal-to-Portal Act of 1947 [PPA]?
In doing so, the Illinois Supreme Court has now effectively concluded that Illinois law wage and hour laws lack critical safeguards and employer protections that have been recognized under federal wage and hour law for nearly a century.
Some historical background is helpful to understand the significance of this recent ruling. Federal wage and hour—that is, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)—law took effect in 1938, setting standards for payment of minimum wages and overtime. Many lawsuits followed over the next decade about what time spent or activities performed by employees constituted compensable “hours worked” for purposes of federal wage and hour law.
In response to this flood of litigation, Congress intervened by passing the PPA to amend the FLSA, which set forth important limits on what time spent or activities performed by employees were compensable and what were not. In particular, it defined what “preliminary and postliminary activities” were compensable (and not) at the beginning and end of the workday: only those that are “integral and indispensable” to the employee’s “principal activities.” In short, the PPA helped curtail expansive interpretations of what constituted “hours worked” for which an employer had to pay an employee.
Fast forward to today, most state wage and hour laws have provisions which incorporate and adopt these limits from the PPA, along with other provisions from the FLSA. However, according to the Illinois Supreme Court, their state law is different.
Based on a “plain reading” of “dramatic departures” in Illinois law from federal law, it concluded that Illinois law—through rulemaking of the Illinois Department of Labor—broadly defines “hours worked” as including all time an employee is mandated to be on the premises (without reference to the limits set forth in the PPA about preliminary, postliminary, and principal activities).
This is significant, especially in the context of the pending class action against Amazon, which involves some 20,000 employees in the State of Illinois. Those employees claim that Amazon should have paid, but failed to pay, them for time spent undergoing medical screenings at warehouses during the recent pandemic, which took 10-15 minutes on average. Aggregating all this unpaid time across so many employees over multiple years, the alleged damages are undoubtedly substantial. Not to mention that the Illinois wage and hour law provides for the tripling of unpaid overtime or minimum wages, along with additional penalties and attorneys’ fees. The stakes are high.
Ultimately (and presumably mindful of the drastic consequences of its decision), the Illinois Supreme Court noted that the Illinois state legislature—not the Court—was the body to make any changes to the law. This statement by the Court likely rings a bell for those who recall the early years of litigation under Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), wherein the Court—when asked to interpret the scope of BIPA—similarly called on the legislature to act to resolve concerns flowing from its expansive interpretation of the law.
Only time will tell whether, when, and how the Illinois legislature acts and/or reacts to this latest legal development. For the sake of employers across the state, we hope soon. In the meantime, however, don’t hesitate to reach out to a member of our Labor and Employment Team to review and discuss your timekeeping and pay practices to eliminate or mitigate against risks and liabilities under this new legal precedent.
