Human Resource Blog

Exempt Employee Jury Duty - California

	Attendance Management
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	Compensation
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Does an exempt employee in California have to be paid a full bimonthly salary if on jury duty?

No, a California employer does not have to pay any employee for jury duty, under state law.

 

Employees who are salaried non-exempt need not be paid for days that they are absent, under both state law and the federal FLSA or Fair Labor Standards Act. Jury duty counts as an absence from work, for this purpose. Although jurors may work hard, they are not working for the employer, so there is no legal requirement that the employer pay them.

 

The FLSA permits employers to not pay a salaried exempt worker when the worker performs no work on that day. However, if the salaried exempt employee must report to work after jury duty, he or she must be paid for the entire day. This is also true if the employee uses her lunch break to perform work activities, or is working part of the day from her home or another location. So a salaried employee who answered emails from home or during her lunch hour would be entitled to payment for the entire day.

But as long as the employee performs no work during that day, she need not be paid.

The California court info website at http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/jury/index.htm states, “State law does not require employers to compensate employees who are absent because of jury service. Many employers do, however, have jury-leave policies that provide compensation to employees for the time they are needed at court for jury service.”