At the moment, if you have a locked layer above the layer you are working in, the eyedropper tool selects colors and properties of the top layer - the locked layer - instead of the (unlocked) layer you are working on.

This causes frustration as every time you want to eyedrops something, you have to make a bunch of layers invisible first.

If an option could be added to the eyedropper tool, such as "ignore locked layers", this problem would be gone completely and working with Illustrator would be a lot smoother and faster.

This could be an option under the eyedropper preferences.