Personnel staffing firm PeopleShare is facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly violating Illinois' biometrics privacy law.
The suit accuses the company of wrongly scanning workers' fingerprints when clocking in and out, without obtaining proper consent or making necessary disclosures about the collection, storage, use, or destruction of biometric identifiers.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of named plaintiff, Toby Britten, and other allegedly similarly situated employees in Illinois. According to the complaint filed in Cook County Circuit Court, PeopleShare requires its employees to use a biometric finger scanning time clock to record their work hours. This practice allegedly violates the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which obligates companies to obtain written consent from employees before capturing or storing their biometric identifiers.
The lawsuit seeks damages and injunctive relief for PeopleShare's alleged BIPA violations.
PeopleShare is one of thousands of Illinois employers targeted by class actions under the BIPA law in recent years. Plaintiffs' lawyers have seized on recent pro-plaintiff decisions by the Illinois Supreme Court, which have left most Illinois businesses with few defenses against such suits, even though plaintiffs have to this point not accused any employers of causing anyone any actual harm, such as identity theft, from such fingerprint scans.
The lawyers have collectively secured hundreds of millions of dollars in fees from a growing list of settlements, which have leveraged BIPA's steep damages provisions.
The lawsuit against PeopleShare was filed on Nov. 29 by attorneys Peter S. Lubin and Patrick D. Austermuehle, of Lubin Austermuehle P.C., of Oakbrook Terrace; and Terrence Buehler and Susan Irion, of the Law Offices of Terrence Buehler, of Chicago.