Bill Text: IL SB0213 | 2023-2024 | 103rd General Assembly | Introduced

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Bill Title: Amends the Burial Rights Act. Provides that contracts between cemetery authorities and cemetery workers' associations prohibiting in any manner dedications of monuments or headstones, family visitations, or visitations to veterans memorials on Sundays or legal holidays shall be deemed to be void as against public policy and wholly unenforceable. Makes conforming changes.

Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 1-0)

Status: (Introduced) 2023-01-31 - Referred to Assignments [SB0213 Detail]

Download: Illinois-2023-SB0213-Introduced.html

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103RD GENERAL ASSEMBLY State of Illinois 2023 and 2024 SB0213 Introduced 1/31/2023, by Sen. Adriane Johnson SYNOPSIS AS INTRODUCED:
820 ILCS 135/1 from Ch. 21, par. 101
Amends the Burial Rights Act. Provides that contracts between cemetery authorities and cemetery worker's associations prohibiting in any manner dedications of monuments or headstones, family visitations, or visitations to veterans memorials on Sundays or legal holidays shall be deemed to be void as against public policy and wholly unenforceable. Makes conforming changes.
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A BILL FOR
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AN ACT concerning employment.
Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois,
represented in the General Assembly:
Section 5. The Burial Rights Act is amended by changing
Section 1 as follows:
(820 ILCS 135/1) (from Ch. 21, par. 101)
Sec. 1. (a) Every contract, agreement or understanding
between a cemetery authority and a cemetery workers'
association which totally prohibits burials of human remains
or prohibits in any manner dedications of monuments or
headstones, family visitations, or visitations to veterans
memorials on Sundays or legal holidays shall be deemed to be
void as against public policy and wholly unenforceable.
(b) Nothing in this Section shall prohibit a cemetery
authority and a cemetery workers' association from entering
into a contract, agreement or understanding which limits
Sunday or holiday burials of human remains to decedents who
were members of religious sects whose tenets or beliefs
require burials within a specified period of time and whose
deaths occurred at such times as to necessitate Sunday or
holiday burials. Such contract, agreement or understanding may
provide that a funeral director notify the cemetery authority
within a reasonable time when a Sunday or holiday burial or

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dedication of a monument or headstone is necessitated by
reason of the decedent's religious tenets or beliefs.
(c) It shall be unlawful for any person to restrain,
prohibit or interfere with the burial of a decedent whose time
of death and religious tenets or beliefs necessitate burial on
a Sunday or legal holiday or prohibit in any manner
dedications of monuments or headstones, family visitations, or
visitations to veterans memorials on a Sunday or legal
holiday.
(d) A violation of this Section is a Class A misdemeanor.
(e) For the purposes of this Act, "cemetery authority"
shall have the meaning ascribed to it in Section 2 of the
Cemetery Care Act or the Cemetery Oversight Act, whichever is
applicable; and "cemetery workers' association" means an
organization of workers who are employed by cemetery
authorities to perform the task of burying human remains or
transporting remains to cemeteries or other places of
interment, and who join together for collective bargaining
purposes or to negotiate terms and conditions of employment.
(Source: P.A. 96-863, eff. 3-1-10.)