Idaho-based trucking company Super T has been hit with a class action lawsuit in Chicago court, accusing the company of allegedly using cameras to wrongly scan its workers' faces to monitor work activity while on the job in Illinois.
"Defendant has a separate biometric camera for each of these workers," says the lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court. "This allows Defendant to associate the information from each of its respective biometric cameras with a particular worker."
The practice allegedly violates the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, enacted in 1998, according to the lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court.
"Plaintiff and class members have not been notified where their biometrics are being stored, for how long Defendant will keep the biometrics, and what might happen to this valuable information," the suit says.
The law requires employers to obtain written consent to collect their biometric data, to maintain the data in a "sufficiently secure manner " and disclose how the data will be handled and destroyed, the suit says.
It seeks damages of $5,000 for each willful or reckless violation of the law and $1,000 for each negligent violation, plus attorney fees.
The lawsuit is one of several filed in recent weeks against trucking companies, which allegedly use cameras to monitor drivers while on the job. The action makes Super T one of the latest of thousands of employers operating in Illinois to become the target of potentially big money class action lawsuits under the state's stringent biometrics privacy law, which business groups have warned is beginning to place a strain on the state's economy.
The plantiffs are represented by Roberto Luis Costales and William H. Beaumont of Beaumont Coastales LLC.
Donavan v. Super T. Transport, Inc., Cook County Circuit Court, 2023CH08642