Court Opinion

ID: 9725732
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 12:06:33.863981+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:19.058744
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE HOLDRIDGE, specially concurring: I concur in the majority’s holding but write separately to comment further on the fact that illegal aliens are employees under the Act. As quoted by the supreme court in 1916, the Act originally defined the term “employee” as “ ‘every person in the service of another under any contract of hire, express or implied, oral or written, including aliens, and minors who are legally permitted to work under the laws of the State.’ ” Victor Chemical Works v. Industrial Board of Illinois, 274 Ill. 11, 20, 113 N.E. 173 (1916). This language plainly shows the legislature’s intent that illegal aliens qualify as employees. When the legislature wanted to delineate between legal and illegal workers of a particular type, it did so explicitly — as evidenced by its treatment of minors. No such delineation applied to aliens, and the relevant statutory language remains unchanged today. The early delineation of minors along legal and nonlegal lines was soon changed. As the supreme court explained: “Section 5 of the act, prior to its amendment in 1927, included ‘minors who are legally permitted to work under the laws of this State.’ By the amendment of 1927 the words ‘who are legally permitted to work under the laws of this State’ were stricken out, and by the terms of the amendment it was made to apply to every person in the service of another under any contract of hire, express or implied, oral or written, including minors.” Landry v. E.G. Shinner & Co., 344 Ill. 579, 583-84, 176 N.E. 895 (1931). In other words, the legislature enacted a single, compendious term (“minors”) to define the employment relationship. As a result, illegally employed minors became “employees” covered by the Act. See Landry, 344 Ill. 579, 176 N.E. 895. This change is telling for purposes of the instant case because the 1927 amendment described minors the same way that aliens were already described (and continue to be described today). Thus, in concluding that illegal aliens are covered by the Act, we do not engage in judicial divination but merely apply the statutory language as plainly written.