Camelot Education, a provider of special education services, has become one of the latest employers hit with a class action lawsuit for allegedly asking job applicants about their family medical history, accusing the company of violating an Illinois genetic privacy law.
The lawsuit was filed Jan. 4 in Cook County Circuit Court by attorneys Timothy P. Kingsbury, Andrew T. Heldut and Colin P. Buscarini, of the firm of McGuire Law P.C., of Chicago, on behalf of named plaintiff Marcy Lucchesi and other allegedly similarly situated individuals.
The complaint alleges that Camelot violated the Illinois Genetic Information Privacy Act (GIPA) by requiring potential employees to undergo a physical exam during which they were asked to provide genetic information in the form of their family medical history.
According to the complaint, GIPA prohibits employers from soliciting or requiring genetic testing or information as a condition of employment.
The lawsuit is seeking a potentially big payout from Camelot of up to $15,000 per alleged violation, as allowed under GIPA, plus attorney fees.
The plaintiffs seek to expand the action to include anyone who applied for a job at Camelot in Illinois in the past five years.
In recent months, a growing group of plaintiffs' lawyers have filed similar GIPA-related class actions against dozens of other large Illinois employers, seeking potentially massive paydays. The lawsuits have followed a similar pattern to those set by litigation under Illinois' controversial Biometric Information Privacy Act, which has resulted in a litany of multi-million dollar settlements, and hundreds of millions of dollars in collective attorney fees paid to class action lawyers who file the suits.
Legal observers believe trial lawyers, including those who have reaped big paydays from the BIPA-related lawsuits, are now trying to similarly land big money from the similar GIPA lawsuits.