Effective immediately, the Illinois Human Rights Act has been amended to provide for civil penalties when an employer commits a civil rights violation, as follows:
- In imposing a civil penalty to vindicate the public interest, a separate penalty may be imposed for each specific act constituting a civil rights violation, and for each aggrieved party injured by the civil rights violation:
- in an amount up to $16,000 if the employer has not committed any prior civil rights violation;
- in an amount up to $42,500 if the employer has committed one other civil rights violation during the 5-year period ending on the date of the filing of the charge; and
- in an amount not up to $70,000 if the employer has committed 2 or more civil rights violations during the 7-year period ending on the date of the filing of the charge;
- if the civil rights violations are committed by the same natural person who had previously committed violations, then the civil penalties set forth above may be imposed without regard to the period of time within which any subsequent civil rights violation occurred.
You can access the enacted bill here.