Illinois part-time workers can now take paid leave to donate organs

New Law Takes Effect January 2026

If you work part-time in Illinois and want to donate a kidney, you no longer have to choose between saving a life and paying your bills.

Starting January 1, 2026, employers with 51 or more workers must provide paid leave to part-time employees who serve as organ donors.

Illinois joins a small group of states offering this protection, and the timing matters more than you might think.

Organ Donors Get Paid Leave

The new law gives part-time organ donors up to 10 days of paid leave per year.

Pay is calculated based on your average daily earnings from the previous two months, so the amount varies by worker.

Full-time employees in Illinois already had access to organ donation leave, but part-timers were left out until Governor JB Pritzker signed House Bill 1616 in August 2025.

The law applies to private employers with 51 or more workers and all public employers in the state.

103,000 People Are Waiting

Right now, more than 103,000 Americans are on the national transplant waiting list. Every eight minutes, another name gets added.

Thirteen people die every day because they never received an organ in time. The waitlist has grown for years, and the gap between supply and demand keeps widening.

Living donors are the fastest way to close that gap, but most potential donors work jobs that offer no protection if they take time off for surgery.

Kidneys Are 87 Percent of It

Of everyone waiting for a transplant, roughly 87 percent need a kidney. You can live a healthy life with just one, which is why living kidney donation exists.

The average wait time for a deceased donor kidney is three to five years, sometimes longer depending on blood type and location.

A living donor can cut that wait to months.

But donating requires surgery, recovery, and time away from work that many part-time employees simply cannot afford.

Recovery Takes Weeks

Living kidney donors typically stay in the hospital for one to two nights after surgery. Most feel well enough to go home quickly, but full recovery takes four to six weeks.

During that time, you cannot lift anything heavy, and office workers usually need two to three weeks before returning to their desks.

Jobs requiring physical labor may require six weeks or more. Without paid leave, that recovery period means no paycheck for workers living close to the edge.

Part-Timers Had Nothing Before

Before this law, part-time workers in Illinois had no guarantee of paid leave for organ donation.

If you wanted to donate, you had to use whatever sick time or vacation you had saved, or simply go without pay. For workers already stretched thin, that made donation impossible.

The new law changes the math by ensuring part-time donors get compensated while they heal, removing one of the biggest barriers to living donation.

The Gig Economy Gap

Part-time and gig workers face a benefits gap that makes organ donation especially risky.

Only about 40 percent of gig economy workers have access to health insurance, compared to 82 percent of full-time employees.

Paid leave is even rarer.

When you work multiple jobs with no single employer responsible for your benefits, taking weeks off for surgery can mean financial disaster.

Laws like Illinois’s are designed to fill that gap for a growing segment of the workforce.

Federal Workers Get 30 Days

Federal employees already have strong organ donation protections.

They can take up to 30 days of paid leave per year to donate an organ, plus seven days for bone marrow donation.

This leave is separate from regular sick time and vacation. Private sector protections are even more uneven, which is why state laws like Illinois’s matter.

State employee benefits vary widely, with some states offering generous paid leave and others offering nothing at all.

California Started This in 2011

California was the first state to require private employers to provide paid organ donation leave.

The 2011 law gives workers at companies with 15 or more employees up to 30 business days of paid leave to donate an organ.

Hawaii followed with its own mandate, and a handful of other states have since added protections, though many only cover state employees or offer unpaid leave.

Illinois now joins the short list of states requiring private employers to pay donors during recovery.

Living Kidneys Work Better

There is a medical reason to encourage living donation beyond just cutting wait times. Kidneys from living donors tend to function better and last longer than those from deceased donors.

The organ spends less time outside a body, and living donors are carefully screened to ensure their kidneys are healthy.

Recipients of living donor kidneys also have better long-term outcomes and lower mortality rates. Every living donation potentially frees up a spot on the deceased donor waitlist for someone else.

Employers Must Pay Attention

Illinois employers covered by the law have until January 1, 2026, to update their policies.

Companies need to revise employee handbooks, adjust payroll systems to calculate average daily pay over 60 days, and train HR staff on handling donation leave requests.

The Illinois Department of Labor is expected to issue additional guidance before the effective date.

For part-time workers considering donation, the message is clear: help is coming, and the state wants to make it easier to say yes.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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