Alabama Jury Duty: Pay, Leave, and Retaliation Rights

If you’re called for jury duty in Alabama, your employer must excuse you for every day you’re needed, continue paying your usual wages if you work full-time, leave your vacation and sick leave untouched, and not fire, demote, or otherwise punish you for serving. Those Alabama jury duty employee rights come from Alabama Code Sections 12-16-8 and 12-16-8.1, with an added layer of federal protection if you’re summoned to a federal court.¹²

Show the Summons, Then Report Back After Service

Two small steps unlock everything else the statute gives you. First, show the summons to your immediate supervisor on your next working day after you receive it. That presentation is the legal trigger for your employer’s duty to excuse you for every day of state or federal jury service.¹

Second, when you’re released from jury service, whether for the day or for good, report for work at your next regularly scheduled hour. The anti-retaliation protections in Section 12-16-8.1 are tied to that condition. Skipping a shift after you’ve been dismissed from the courthouse gives your employer an opening to argue the absence had nothing to do with jury duty.²

Getting Paid While You Serve

If you’re a full-time employee, your employer must pay you your “usual compensation” for every day you spend on jury duty. That means your regular wages, not a stripped-down jury-duty rate.¹

Part-time workers don’t get that guarantee. The pay requirement in the statute reaches full-time employees only, so whether a part-time employee is paid during jury service depends on what the employer’s own policy says. If there is no policy, there is no pay.

Salaried Exempt Employees

If you’re salaried and classified as exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act, your employer cannot dock your pay for partial-week absences caused by jury duty. Your employer can offset the juror fees you received from the court against that week’s salary. So $40 in juror fees can mean $40 less in your paycheck for that week, without breaking the salary-basis rule.³ If jury duty keeps you out for an entire workweek and you perform no work at all, your employer isn’t required to pay you for that week.

Juror Fees From the Court

The court pays its own allowance on top of anything from your employer. In Alabama state court, that’s $10.00 per day plus $0.05 per mile for travel to and from the courthouse, paid from the State Treasury. Whoever pays you the fee must also give you a written statement showing the daily rate and the total amount.¹

Your Accrued Leave Is Off Limits

Your employer cannot require or even ask you to use vacation, sick leave, personal time, or unpaid leave to cover jury service. That protection covers the whole process: responding to the summons, sitting through jury selection, and any days you actually serve on a panel.¹

One limit worth knowing. The statute doesn’t force employers to create leave benefits that don’t exist. If your workplace has no vacation or sick leave policy at all, the law doesn’t make one appear because you got a summons. It just keeps your employer from raiding what you’ve already earned.

Retaliation: What You Can Sue For

Section 12-16-8.1 prohibits your employer from firing you or taking any adverse employment action against you solely because you served on a jury. “Adverse employment action” is broad. It reaches demotions, pay cuts, punitive schedule changes, and other workplace consequences meant to penalize jury service.²

If your employer violates the statute, you can sue in any Alabama court and recover actual damages (lost wages, lost benefits) and punitive damages. The statute puts no cap on the punitive figure, so the amount depends on what a jury thinks the conduct deserves. The one gate on your claim: you must have reported to work at your next regularly scheduled hour after being released from jury service.²

Postponing Your Service

Every Alabama juror gets one automatic postponement under Section 12-16-63.1. You don’t have to justify it.¹

A separate rule protects small workplaces. If you work for a business with five or fewer full-time employees (or the equivalent) and a coworker has also been summoned for the same service period, the court will automatically postpone and reschedule one of you. Nobody has to file a request. The postponement is mandatory once the conditions are met, and using it does not use up your individual automatic postponement.¹

If You’re Summoned to Federal Court

A separate federal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1875, prohibits any employer from firing, threatening, intimidating, or coercing an employee because of federal jury service. Employers who violate it face a civil penalty of up to $5,000 per violation per employee and may be ordered to perform community service. A federal court can also order your reinstatement without loss of seniority and hold your employer liable for lost wages and benefits. If you’re reinstated, you’re treated as if you’d been on a leave of absence, which keeps your insurance and other employer-provided benefits intact.⁴

Federal juror pay is also higher. Federal courts pay $50 per day of attendance, plus a mileage allowance and reimbursement for tolls, ferries, and in some cases parking. The $50 applies for each day you’re required to report, whether or not you’re selected for a panel.⁵

What Happens If You Ignore the Summons

Skipping jury duty carries real consequences. In federal court, failing to appear after being summoned can result in a fine of up to $1,000, up to three days in jail, a community service order, or any combination of the three. Courts usually issue a show-cause order first, giving you a chance to explain. In state court, judges have contempt authority that can produce similar penalties, with specifics varying by circuit. Most Alabama jury service runs no more than five working days, so the disruption is usually manageable and the risk of ignoring the summons isn’t worth taking.

1
Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 12-16-8 – Employees Excused from Employment; Compensation; Postponement of Service
2
Alabama Legislature. Alabama Code 12-16-8.1 – Discharge of Employee or Adverse Employee Action
3
eCFR. 29 CFR 541.602
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1875 – Protection of Jurors Employment
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1871 – Fees