Downers Grove, Illinois-based Hearthside Food Solutions will pay $4.5 million to settle an Illinois child labor probe after a Texas bankruptcy judge approved a settlement between the company and the Illinois Department of Labor and attorney general Friday.
The Illinois agencies opened their child labor probe into Hearthside, which was named in a major New York Times investigation into migrant child labor, in 2023. A separate national investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor was still open as of last month.
Because Hearthside filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Texas in November — in a move it said was not primarily driven by the child labor allegations — the settlement agreement had to be approved by a bankruptcy judge before it could take effect…