What HB 3773 requires
Illinois HB 3773 amends the Illinois Human Rights Act (IHRA) to make it a civil-rights violation for an employer to use AI in a way that has the effect of discriminating against employees or candidates on the basis of a protected class, regardless of intent.
It also adds two affirmative duties:
- Notice. Employers must notify a candidate or employee when AI is used in connection with a recruitment, hiring, promotion, renewal of employment, selection for training, discharge, discipline, tenure, or the terms, privileges, or conditions of employment.
- No use of protected-class signals. Employers cannot use AI that uses (directly or indirectly) zip code as a proxy for protected classes. The statute calls out zip code by name; courts will read "indirect" broadly.
The Illinois Department of Human Rights (IDHR) has rule-making authority and will publish enforcement guidance.
Who's affected
The amendments to the IHRA cover all Illinois employers subject to the IHRA (15+ employees as a general rule). The notice obligation applies to any AI use across the full employment lifecycle, not just recruitment.
Key deadlines
| Date | Trigger |
|---|---|
| 1 January 2026 | HB 3773 amendments to the IHRA take effect. |
Note: Illinois already has a narrower regime — the Artificial Intelligence Video Interview Act (AIVIA) from 2020 — which requires notification and consent before AI analyses a video interview. AIVIA remains in force; HB 3773 sits on top of it.
What hiring deployers specifically must do
- Audit your AI surface for protected-class-proxy variables. Zip code is the explicit statutory example. The same logic applies to variables that strongly correlate with race, sex, disability, etc., even when the model is not given protected-class data directly.
- Notify candidates and employees when AI is used in any of the covered decision contexts. The notice can be generic, but it must actually be delivered.
- Keep records of bias testing. While HB 3773 does not impose an NYC LL 144-style annual bias audit, IDHR enforcement will rely on evidence that the employer tested for disparate impact and acted on what they found.
- Run AIVIA notice + consent flows correctly for video interviews, in addition to the HB 3773 notice.
Common misconceptions
- "HB 3773 is just a notice law." No. The substantive obligation — that AI use cannot have a discriminatory effect — is what creates the enforcement risk. Notice is a procedural duty layered on top.
- "Disparate-intent is what matters." No. The IHRA already covered intentional discrimination. HB 3773 explicitly attaches IHRA liability to AI-driven disparate effect, which is a meaningfully lower bar.
- "Removing zip code is enough." Likely not. Courts will reach variables that are statistical proxies for zip code (commute distance, metro area, neighborhood-level demographics) when the resulting disparate effect can be shown.
- "AIVIA is replaced by HB 3773." No. AIVIA's video-interview notice
- consent regime remains in force as a more specific overlay.
How vendors are addressing it
A vendor's posture on HB 3773 is largely a function of three things:
- Whether the vendor publishes its variable list so an Illinois employer can confirm zip code (and proxies) are excluded.
- Whether the vendor publishes subgroup performance metrics that an Illinois employer can rely on for the disparate-effect analysis.
- Whether the vendor provides a notice template the employer can reuse for the HB 3773 candidate notification.
Across the directory, vendors with public exclusion lists score better on Data Governance Disclosure. See the methodology for how that flows into total score, and the vendor directory for cited evidence per vendor.