A class action lawsuit has accused nursing home operator Extended Care Consulting of allegedly violating Illinois' biometrics privacy law by asking workers to scan their fingerprints when punching the clock at work.
Extended Care operates 16 skilled nursing centers in Chicago and the suburbs.
The plaintiff, Tiara Brandon, has filed the suit individually and on behalf of all other allegedly similarly situated employees. According to the lawsuit, Extended Care Consulting, along with co-defendants PropayHR LLC, Countryside Nursing and Rehabilitation Center LLC, and South Suburban Rehabilitation Center LLC, allegedly have violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) by failing to develop and comply with a retention schedule for biometric identifiers.
They are also accused of obtaining biometric data without providing adequate written notice or obtaining a written release from workers before requiring them to scan their fingerprints to verify their identities and track their work hours.
Plaintiffs are seeking damages of $1,000-$5,000 per alleged violation, as allowed under BIPA.
The lawsuit and its demands follow a pattern set by thousands of similar class actions filed against Illinois employers in the past eight years under the BIPA law. Those lawsuits have 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, thanks in large part to a series of Illinois Supreme Court decisions which have interpreted the law in ways that have left most employers largely defenseless against such legal claims.
Notably, the state high court has declared plaintiffs don't need to prove they were actually harmed by the biometric scans, and the court has defined "individual violations" as each time a worker scans their fingerprint over a span of five years before the filing of a lawsuit. When multiplied across entire workforces punching a timeclock multiple times per day, such potential damage awards could be "annihilative," some judges have observed.
The lawsuit was filed on Feb. 6 in Cook County Circuit Court.
Plaintiffs are represented in the action by attorneys Ryan F. Stephan, James B. Zouras and Danielle M. Sweet, of Stephan Zouras, of Chicago.