The Salvation Army will pay nearly $900,000 to settle a class action lawsuit accusing it of violating an Illinois biometrics privacy law for the way the organization – one of the country’s largest charitable providers of human services - required workers to scan their fingerprints when punching the clock.
The lawyers who brought the action will receive nearly $300,000 of the settlement fund, under the deal.
A Cook County judge signed off on the deal last month to end the lawsuit brought under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.
Alejando Caffarelli
| Caffarelli & Associates
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of named plaintiff Nancy Gebel, of Oak Lawn. According to the complaint, Gebel worked as a therapist for the Salvation Army.
The lawsuit focused on the Salvation Army’s use of so-called biometric timekeeping to log its workers’ hours for payroll. Specifically, such devices require employees to scan a fingerprint or other so-called biometric identifier to verify their identity when punching the clock. Such devices allegedly are used by employers to reduce incidences of fraud, in which employees will punch the clock on behalf of co-workers who either leave early or arrive late, to make it appear they had been on the job during those work hours.
According to Gebel’s lawsuit, however, the Salvation Army allegedly did not abide by the requirements of the Illinois BIPA law before requiring employees to use the fingerprint scanning timeclocks.
Gebel alleged the Salvation Army did not obtain written authorization from employees before requiring them to scan fingerprints when punching in and out of work shifts. Neither did the Salvation Army provide workers with notices allegedly required by the BIPA law, informing employees and the public whether and how the scanned fingerprints would be used, saved, shared with third parties, and ultimately destroyed after the employees ceased to work for the organization.
Enacted in 2008, ostensibly to protect consumers against the threat of data breaches and identity theft, the BIPA law has been deployed since middle of the last decade by trial lawyers against a host of businesses of all sizes and types operating in Illinois.
The law has been wielded against tech giants like Facebook, from which trial lawyers have wrested a $600 million settlement over claims related to its use of “tagging” algorithms to scan users’ faces in uploaded photos.
But the law has proven a bonanza for trial lawyers to pursue class action claims against employers in Illinois, whether they be for-profit large corporations, smaller operations, or not-for-profit charities.
The law exempts government agencies and financial corporations from such lawsuits.
The lawsuits have typically targeted businesses that require employees to scan fingerprints to verify their identity when punching the clock to begin and end work shifts, or when entering secure areas, such as cash rooms, truck or rail yards, or drug supply closets.
Settlements have typically ranged from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions, with the lawyers who brought the actions typically collecting one-third of those settlement funds.
The lawsuits, however, accelerated in 2019, after the Illinois Supreme Court ruled Illinois law didn’t require the plaintiffs to demonstrate they had ever actually been harmed by the collection of their biometric data. Rather, the courts have ruled, plaintiffs need only allege a business violated the technical notice and consent provisions to bring their big-dollar actions.
Cook County Judge Celia Gamrath approved the Salvation Army settlement agreement on Dec. 14.
According to Gamrath’s order and other court documents related to the settlement, the settlement was worth approximately $898,000.
Caffarelli & Associates would receive about $299,000 from that sum.
The settlement class would include 1,429 Salvation Army employees in Illinois, each of whom could receive about $400 from the deal.
According to its website, the Salvation Army operates a dozen facilities in Chicago alone, with dozens more throughout the Chicago area and downstate.
According to its website, the Christian charity provides a host of human services, including aid to the homeless, disaster relief, food pantries, job and skills training, substance abuse rehabilitation, summer camps, after-school programs, and aid for domestic abuse victims, among others.
The Salvation Army has been represented by the firm of Faegre Baker & Daniels, of Chicago.