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Can a School Require Employees to Serve Jury Duty During Off Time

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I have recently been summoned for Jury Duty.

I teach at a California Public School that happens to be a charter school. To avoid taking instructional time away from my students, I made sure to schedule my service in June, after the last of the final exams and grades are handed in. While we still have meetings and classroom cleanup during the month, I thought that this would be a good solution.

My supervisor seems to significantly disagree. She asked that I try to reschedule Jury Duty into July, a month where I receive no pay check from the school, and I am essentially on unpaid vacation from working for the school. I’ve been told that teachers are considered, “11 month” employees, if that impacts the answer to my question.

The supervisor went on to state that it was going to be written into the school’s employment contract next year that the Charter School’s 11 month employees must schedule any Jury Duty into the month of July–the month in which they do not really work for the school.

Can they do this? If not, what suggestions do you have if they try to enact this policy?

Thank you for your time.

This is probably a clash of cultures. You are assuming that time spent in the classroom with students is the teacher’s highest priority. In many school systems (for better or for worse) the workplace culture is that meetings and seminars scheduled for “in-service” days have a higher priority than classroom time.

 

 

Having said that, under the JSIA, the federal Jury System Improvement Act, an employer cannot legally coerce or attempt to coerce an employee into changing the date for jury service. If an employer does discriminate against an employee for taking time off for jury duty service, the employer could be fined up to $1,000 per instance, per employee. The employer may also have to pay for lost wage and benefits to the employee if the employee was terminated.

 

The US Department of Labor enforces the JSIA.