COOK COUNTY RECORD

As the Illinois Supreme Court hands down two pivotal decisions confirming businesses in Illinois could face huge liabilities under Illinois' biometrics privacy law, more employers have been targeted in Cook County Circuit Court by class action lawsuits under the stringent mandates of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.

Attorneys Roberto Luis Costales and William Beaumont, of the firm of Beaumont Costales, of Chicago, for instance, represented different plaintiffs in 10 new class action lawsuits filed against a variety of different employers in some of the most recent rounds of litigation under the BIPA law.

Class actions filed Feb. 3-14 by the Beaumont Costales lawyers in Cook County Circuit Court include:

• Dexter Minor v Westrock Company, filed Feb. 3 
• Tertius McClain v Salco Product, Inc. filed Feb. 3
• Jose Javier Martinez Santiago v 2000Groups Plus, Inc., filed Feb. 3
• Walter Pitts v McElroy Metal Mill, Inc., filed Feb. 3
• Angela Tilman  v Mi-Jack Products, Inc., filed Feb. 3
• Nerehida Jacobo v SKExpress Inc., filed Feb. 14
• Cassidy Kreitner v Cedar Ridge Care and Rehabilitation Facility, filed Feb. 14 
• Lorena Vasquez v Midwest Poultry Services, filed Feb. 14
• David Fuentes v Mat Holding, filed Feb. 14
• Robin Lewis v Quincy Exact Solutions LLC,  and Quincy Recycle Paper, filed Feb. 14.

Illinois businesses continue to be targets for potentially massive payment demands for allegedly requiring workers to scan their fingerprints to verify their identity when punching the clock at work or when accessing sensitive areas in work places, like cash rooms and drug lockers, as a host of employers across the U.S. have done for decades.

In Illinois, the lawsuits, which have piled into court by the thousands since 2015, claim such actions by employers violate the BIPA law, if employers did not first secure written consent from workers before requiring the fingerprint scans, or providing them with notices detailing how the company might handle the fingerprint scan data. 

The lawsuits have already amounted to huge payouts from employers accused of BIPA violations. 

Under the BIPA law, plaintiffs are allowed to demand damages of $1,000-$5,000 per violation in which someone’s biometrics are scanned. In employment cases, this could mean employers could be liable for up to $5,000 for each time an employee scanned a fingerprint in the workplace. Small businesses looking for workplace efficiency through technology face the same potential fines as their corporate counterparts if they are not BIPA complaint. 

Illinois courts have consistently rebuffed nearly every effort by employers to limit the law's potential economic destruction.

The Illinois Supreme Court and other Illinois judges have rejected efforts to classify workplace BIPA claims as workers’ compensation claims, which would have kicked the cases out of court. 

And this month, the Illinois Supreme Court handed down two decisions on key BIPA-related questions, which together mean businesses who are found to be not compliant with BIPA mandates could face possible litigation from workers demanding up to $5,000 damages for each and every employee fingerprint scan over the preceding five years.

Depending on the number of employees involved, this could amount to court-ordered payouts well into the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. For instance, fast food chain White Castle has estimated in court that, under a possible scenario, they could face up to $17 billion in damages for fingerprint scans by about 9,500 workers dating back five years before they were sued under the BIPA law.

Businesses have warned that, without relief from courts or changes to the law from legislators, the Illinois Supreme Court's rulings will result in economic devastation from "astronomical damages" that put entire companies out of business, over technical violations of the law that resulted in no concrete harm to workers.

Jonathan Bilyk contributed to this report.