My Employee Just Received a Summons for Jury Duty. Do I Have to Pay Him/Her for Time Off Work to Serve on a Jury?

While MN law requires that you let your employees have time off without threat of harassment or retaliation to serve on a jury, there is no law in Minnesota regarding employees to pay for their time away from work for jury duty. A slight wrinkle in that under federal law where an employee has been classified as “exempt” from the requirement to be paid overtime, the employee is normally entitled to be paid his/her salary for a week in which he/she works (there are a handful of exceptions to this rule). You could deduct the amount of jury pay from exempt employee’s salary, but most employers don’t do both given the administrative hassle over the pittance paid by MN courts reimbursing people for jury duty. Thus, if the employee works on Monday, even if he/she spends the rest of the week gone for jury duty, he/she is still entitled to his/her weekly wages. Non-exempt employees, however, would not be entitled to pay for time missed from work for jury duty, unless your company provided some sort of paid time off for jury duty as a benefit.

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