A class action lawsuit has accused the operators of senior living centers of allegedly violating Illinois' biometrics privacy law by requiring workers to scan fingerprints when punching the clock.
The plaintiff, Nicole Pointer, accuses the companies of violating the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) by allegedly failing to develop a public retention schedule and guidelines for permanently destroying biometric identifiers, obtained biometric data without providing adequate written notice or obtaining a written release, shared biometric data without obtaining informed consent, and failed to store, transmit, and protect biometric data adequately.
Prairie Village Supportive Living and Vantage Senior Care manages multiple senior living facilities in Illinois.
The case was filed Feb. 29 in Cook County Circuit Court.
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.
Plaintiffs are represented in the action by attorneys Ryan F. Stephan, James B. Zouras and Danielle M. Sweet, of Stephan Zouras, of Chicago.
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