Judge orders McDonald's must improve COVID-19 employee protections

While McDonald’s “has the right idea,” the judge wrote in her order, “it is not being put into practice exactly as McDonald’s envisioned, thus endangering public health.”

In one of the first rulings to order a business to improve its COVID-19 pandemic protections, a Chicago judge has ordered McDonald’s to better enforce social distancing and mask-wearing at its stores, concluding the risks to the community are “severe” and potentially a “matter of life or death” for its employees.

The June 24 ruling by Cook County Circuit Court Judge Eve Reilly found that McDonald’s had supplied enough face coverings, hand sanitizer and gloves, monitored infections among workers and educated employees on how the COVID-19 pandemic spreads. However, she wrote, McDonald’s was not properly training its employees on two key elements of its policies: social distancing and correct wearing of masks. And that contradicted Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s executive order on May 29 regarding COVID-19 protections.