PunchJury Duty and Voting Leave: What Small Employers Owe in 2026
Jury Duty and Voting Leave: What Small Employers Owe in 2026
The short answer: There is no federal law requiring you to pay an hourly employee for jury duty or for time spent voting. Eight states require paid jury duty leave anyway, and as of January 1, 2026, 21 states plus Washington D.C. require paid voting leave. Salaried exempt employees are a separate rule entirely: you generally cannot dock their salary for a partial-week jury absence at all. And whatever you pay for those hours, they are not hours worked, so they must never inflate the overtime base. Punch keeps time-off records separate from punched hours, so overtime is calculated on the hours the crew actually worked.
A juror summons and an election day both do the same thing to a small crew. One person is gone for a chunk of a workday, the schedule shifts, and somebody has to decide what shows up on the paycheck. Getting that decision wrong is rarely expensive on its own. Getting it wrong in a way that also distorts the week's overtime is where it starts to cost real money.
Federal Law Sets a Very Low Floor
For hourly, nonexempt employees there is no federal obligation to pay for jury service. The FLSA pays for hours worked, and sitting in a courthouse is not work for your business. The same logic applies to voting: no federal statute requires private employers to give time off to vote, paid or unpaid. Whether your crew gets either one depends entirely on the state they work in.
What federal law does protect is the job itself. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1875, no employer may discharge, threaten to discharge, intimidate, or coerce a permanent employee because of federal jury service. Violate it and you are liable for lost wages and benefits, you can be enjoined and ordered to reinstate the employee, you face a civil penalty of up to $5,000 per violation per employee, and a court may order community service. The juror can apply to have counsel appointed to bring the claim. Nearly every state has a parallel protection for state court service, and several treat retaliation as a criminal contempt matter.
So the split is clean. Paying for the time is mostly a state question. Keeping the job open is not optional anywhere.
The Salary-Basis Rule That Catches Owners
Exempt salaried employees follow a different rule, and it is the one small employers miss most often.
Under 29 CFR § 541.602, an employer may not make deductions from an exempt employee's salary for absences caused by jury duty, attendance as a witness, or temporary military leave, when the employee performs any work during that workweek. If your salaried foreman sits on a jury Monday through Wednesday and works Thursday and Friday, he gets his full weekly salary. Docking three days out of it puts the exemption itself at risk, which is a far more expensive problem than the three days.
There are two narrow relief valves. You may offset any jury fees the employee receives from the court against the salary owed for that week without losing the exemption. And if the employee performs no work at all for an entire workweek, no salary is due for that week.
Eight States Require Paid Jury Duty Leave
Most states require only that you release the employee and not retaliate. Eight go further and require wages, with meaningfully different terms:
- Alabama. Full usual wages for the entire period of service.
- Nebraska. Full wages for the entire period of service.
- Tennessee. Full regular wages for up to ten days of service.
- Connecticut. Full regular wages for the first five days.
- Massachusetts. Full regular wages for the first three days.
- Colorado. Regular wages up to $50 per day for the first three days.
- New York. Employers with more than ten employees must pay at least $40 per day, or the employee's regular wages if lower, for the first three days.
- Louisiana. Full wages for the first day the employee reports.
Terms shift, small-employer thresholds exist in several of these, and states amend the numbers, so confirm the current text with your state labor department before you write the check. The pattern is what matters for planning: where a paid mandate exists it usually front-loads the first few days and then stops, which means a long trial almost always crosses into unpaid or policy-paid territory. If you operate across state lines, the crew member's work location governs, and a single company policy paying the first three days everywhere is simpler than tracking eight variations.
Voting Leave Is the Bigger Patchwork
Jury duty is eight states. Voting is far broader. As of January 1, 2026, 28 states and Washington D.C. guarantee employees time off to vote. Of those, 21 states plus D.C. require the time to be paid, and seven require only unpaid leave.
The mechanics repeat across most of them. The right is usually conditional: it applies only when the work schedule genuinely conflicts with polling hours, so an employee who already has a comfortable window outside their shift is not entitled to the leave. Duration is commonly capped at two or three hours, though a few states set no fixed cap. Many states let the employer designate which hours of the shift the leave falls on, typically the beginning or the end. Several require advance notice from the employee.
The two largest states show how specific this gets.
California. Elections Code § 14000 gives employees up to two hours of paid leave to vote when they do not have sufficient time outside working hours. If, on the third working day before the election, the employee knows they will need the time, they must give at least two working days of notice. Employers must post a notice of these rights at least ten days before every statewide election.
New York. Election Law § 3-110 provides up to two hours of paid time off when the employee lacks sufficient time to vote. Sufficient time is defined precisely: four consecutive hours either between the polls opening and the start of the shift, or between the end of the shift and the polls closing. Employers must post the provisions conspicuously at least ten working days before an election and keep the notice up until the polls close.
Both statutes put a posting duty on the employer, ahead of the election, whether or not anyone asks for the time. That deadline is the part small businesses miss.
The Overtime Trap Nobody Warns You About
This is where a small payroll decision turns into a wage-and-hour problem.
Jury duty hours and voting leave hours are not hours worked. They do not count toward the 40-hour overtime threshold, and pay for them is not part of the regular rate. 29 CFR § 778.218 treats payments for occasional idle periods, and names jury service explicitly, as excludable from the regular rate under section 7(e)(2). It also says plainly that no part of such a payment may be credited toward overtime compensation due.
Read that twice, because both halves bite:
Do not count the hours toward overtime. A crew member who works 36 hours and sits on a jury for 8 has 44 hours on the paycheck and zero overtime hours. If you type all 44 into the timesheet as worked time, you pay four hours of premium you do not owe. Do that every jury summons and every election and the leakage is real.
Do not credit the payment against overtime. If the same crew member actually works 44 hours and separately gets paid for a jury day, the jury payment does not reduce what you owe in overtime premium. It sits outside the calculation.
The root cause of both errors is the same: paid-but-not-worked hours getting typed into the hours column so the paycheck total comes out right. Spreadsheets encourage this because a spreadsheet only has one column. That single shortcut is what corrupts the overtime math.
What This Looks Like on the Timesheet
Four things. Three of them are records.
- Write a civic leave policy. One page covering jury duty and voting: how to notify you, what you pay and for how many days, whether jury fees are offset, and the reminder that the job is protected. Post the voting notice on your state's deadline.
- Keep the absence out of the punch record. Worked hours come from punching in and punching out. A jury day or a voting hour is a time-off record, not a punch.
- Let the system calculate overtime on worked hours only. Never hand-add civic hours into the total and hope the multiplier sorts itself out.
- Keep the paperwork with the pay period. The summons, the court's attendance certificate, the jury fee amount you offset. It costs nothing to file and settles any later question in one minute.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to pay hourly employees for jury duty?
Under federal law, no. Eight states require it: Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York, and Tennessee, each on its own terms and day limits. Everywhere else it is a policy decision. You must still release the employee and you may not retaliate.
Can I dock a salaried employee's pay for jury duty?
Generally no. If the exempt employee performs any work during that workweek, the full salary is owed for a partial-week jury absence. You may offset jury fees received from the court against that week's salary. If no work is performed for the entire workweek, no salary is due.
Do jury duty hours count toward the 40-hour overtime threshold?
No. They are not hours worked. A week of 36 worked hours plus 8 jury hours produces no overtime. Counting them is a common and expensive spreadsheet error.
Is jury duty pay included in the regular rate for overtime?
No. Under 29 CFR 778.218, pay for occasional idle periods including jury service is excludable from the regular rate, and no part of it may be credited toward overtime owed.
How many states require paid time off to vote?
As of January 1, 2026, 28 states and Washington D.C. guarantee voting leave. Of those, 21 plus D.C. require it to be paid and seven require only unpaid leave. Most caps sit at two or three hours and apply only when the schedule conflicts with polling hours.
Do I have to post anything before an election?
In several states, yes. California requires a notice posted at least ten days before a statewide election. New York requires the provisions of Election Law 3-110 posted at least ten working days before an election and kept up until the polls close. Check your state, because the posting duty exists whether or not an employee asks.
Pay the Civic Hours. Do Not Let Them Distort the Week.
Jury duty and voting are small, predictable interruptions. What makes them costly is a timesheet that cannot tell the difference between an hour worked and an hour paid.
Punch keeps that line clean. Worked hours come from punching in and punching out, recorded to the minute against a job site. Time off, including a jury day or an election morning, is requested by the employee and approved by an owner or manager as its own record, so it never quietly lands in the hours column. Overtime is calculated from real punched hours using the rules for your jurisdiction, with over 50 country presets built in, so a paid civic absence cannot manufacture a premium you do not owe. Owners and managers approve each pay period before payroll runs, weekly or bi-weekly, with bulk approve for a clean week, then export straight to QuickBooks Online or to CSV and Excel. Punch-in can be geofenced to the job site when you want that verification, and it is a geofence rather than a camera in your crew's face, because trust beats surveillance.
Pricing is flat per workspace instead of per employee, owners are always free, and every plan includes every feature. The 14-day free trial starts on signup, no credit card required.