Another human resources tech vendor has agreed to pay out millions of dollars – with about one-third of that total going to plaintiffs’ lawyers – to end a class action lawsuit brought under Illinois’ biometric privacy law.
Early next month, a Cook County judge is expected to consider granting final approval of a $3.375 million deal to settle a class action brought against HR services and payroll technology firm Paychex.
Under the deal, potentially thousands of Illinois residents who scanned their fingerprints or irises on employee timeclocks sold or supported by Paychex when punching in and out of work shifts could be in line for a cut of the settlement fund.
However, settlement documents posted online said an exact, or even estimated amount per claimant is not yet known, as it will depend on the number of people who seek to grab a share of the funds.
The lawyers who filed the lawsuit, however, are in line to get as much as 35% of the total, or more than $1.18 million.
The plaintiffs have been represented in the case by attorneys Myles McGuire, Evan M. Meyers, Timothy P. Kingsbury and Brendan Duffner, of the firm of McGuire Law P.C., of Chicago.
The McGuire lawyers filed suit in 2019 against Rochester, New York-based Paychex. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of named plaintiff Monique Roberts.
The lawsuit accused Paychex of violating the Illinois Biometric Information Protection Act (BIPA) by allegedly improperly scanning and storing the fingerprints and irises of workers employed by a host of Illinois businesses that used Paychex timeclocks to track their employees’ hours worked. According to the complaint, Paychex was allegedly required to first secure written authorization from those workers before allowing them to scan their fingerprints or irises on the so-called biometric timeclocks.
Such timeclocks require workers to scan a biometric identifier to verify their identity when logging in and out work shifts.
Further, the lawsuit asserted Paychex did not provide those workers with written notices concerning how Paychex would collect, store, share and ultimately destroy their biometric scans, which the plaintiffs said were required by the BIPA law.
The complaint sought to expand the lawsuit to include workers across the state.
The class action complaint claimed to seek damages of $1,000-$5,000 per violation, as allowed under the BIPA law. That law has been interpreted to define individual violations as each time a worker scans a fingerprint or iris without having received the required notices and giving written consent.
The lawsuit was similar to a number of other class actions brought against other HR tech and timeclock vendors under the BIPA law in Chicago courts in recent years.
Faced with potentially massive judgments, Paychex rivals ADP and Novatime have agreed to settle lawsuits against them for a combined $39 million.
HR tech vendor Kronos is continuing to fight a potentially sprawling BIPA class action lawsuit in federal court.
Kronos has argued it should not be held liable for its employer customers’ failure to provide the required notices and obtain the required consent from people who do not work for Kronos.
Kronos most recently also won the right, for now, to try to limit the potential damages against Kronos by arguing that workers effectively granted consent when they continued to scan their fingerprints, knowing the scans were being collected by their employer and potentially others involved in the support of the timeclock devices.
Paychex, however, opted to settle for about $3.4 million.
Cook County Judge Allison Conlon granted preliminary approval to the Paychex settlement on May 28.
The settlement deal would include anyone in Illinois who scanned their fingerprints or any other so-called biometric identifier on a Paychex timeclock from January 2014 to May 2021.
Paychex timeclocks include devices under the brand names of Latham Biometric; ZK Biometric; Precision OEMP Biometric; Cyber 2100; TrueShift Bio Clock; TIB Bio; Invision Iris; TotalPass; NETONE Biometric; ZK/TC500; TIMECO; IT3100; Infotronics; TA785; and Paychex Time.
According to the judge’s order, potential class members have until Aug. 27 to submit claims.
Judge Conlon has scheduled a final approval hearing for Sept. 9.
Paychex has been represented by attorneys Melissa A. Siebert and Matthew C. Wolfe, of the firm of Shook Hardy & Bacon, of Chicago.