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The company that operates Chicago’s Navy Pier, which is led by a politically connected allies of former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, has become one of the latest employers in Illinois hit with a class action lawsuit under the state’s biometrics privacy law.
On Dec. 17, attorneys with two Chicago firms filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court against Navy Pier Inc., accusing the company of violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), for the way it required its workers to scan so-called “biometric identifiers” when punching the clock at the beginning and end of work shifts.
James X. Bormes
| Law Office of James X. Bormes P.C.
The lawsuit is led by named plaintiff Martina Enriquez, identified in the complaint as a Navy Pier employee, and a resident of Cook County. The complaint does not specify any particular jobs or titles held by Enriquez at Navy Pier, or precisely when she worked there.
However, the complaint asserts Navy Pier Inc. violated the BIPA law by requiring Enriquez and other employees to verify their identity by scanning a “biometric identifier” when punching the clock, without first complying with notice and consent procedures allegedly required by the BIPA law.
The complaint does not specify which “biometric identifiers” employees were required to scan. However, typically such biometric punch clocks require workers to scan fingerprints or handprints when clocking in or out of a work shift.
Such measures are typically used by employers to combat so-called “punch fraud,” in which workers may rely on other workers to either punch them in or out of work shifts when they have otherwise either arrived late to work or left early.
According to the complaint, when deploying the biometric timekeeping measures, Navy Pier Inc. allegedly failed to first collect written authorization from Enriquez and other workers before collecting their biometric scans, and also allegedly failed to provide its workers with notices concerning how the biometric scans would be used, stored, shared and ultimately destroyed after the employees stopped working at Navy Pier.
The complaint seeks damages of $1,000-$5,000 per BIPA violation, as permitted under the BIPA law. Individual violations can be defined as each time a worker scanned a biometric identifier without prior written authorization and notice provided.
The complaint seeks to expand the scope of the lawsuit to include all Navy Pier employees who have been required to scan biometric identifiers. The complaint does not indicate how many people that might include.
However, according to Navy Pier’s website, more than 600 full-time, part-time, seasonal and union trade workers are employed at Navy Pier.
Navy Pier Inc. has operated Navy Pier, one of Chicago’s biggest tourist destinations, since 2011, when departing Mayor Daley agreed to allow non-profit corporation Navy Pier Inc. to lease the pier for $1 per year in rent.
Navy Pier Inc. is led by a 33-member board of directors, which includes the former mayor’s daughter.
Several of the former mayor’s political allies also hold executive positions at Navy Pier Inc.
Navy Pier previously had been operated by the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority. That government organization, commonly known as McPier, also operated McCormick Place.
Under the BIPA law, government agencies cannot be sued for violating the law’s notice and consent provisions. Courts have ruled that exemption for government employers does not mean the law unconstituonally violates private business owners' rights to equal protection.
Navy Pier Inc. is just one of the more high profile employers targeted by plaintiffs lawyers under the BIPA law. In the past few years, hundreds of such class actions have been filed, primarily in Cook County court, against employers of many different types and sizes.
The class action activity was given a massive boost in early 2019, when the Illinois Supreme Court ruled plaintiffs don’t need to demonstrate they were ever actually harmed by the collection of biometric information and alleged violation of the law’s technical notice and consent provisions.
Several such lawsuits have settled in recent weeks, costing employers hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars each time.