EVO Transportation & Energy Services, a trucking company, has been accused of violating Illinois' biometrics privacy law. The class action lawsuit alleges that the company improperly scanned the faces of its drivers while they were on duty. The plaintiff, Scott Carlson, filed the complaint on behalf of himself and other drivers similarly affected.
The lawsuit claims that EVO did not inform its employees about the biometric data collection process nor did it obtain their written consent for such actions. The drivers were also not informed about where their biometric data was being stored or how long it would be kept. The suit argues that these practices are in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
According to the complaint, under BIPA, companies must notify and obtain consent from individuals before collecting their biometric information. They are also required to disclose how this data will be used and stored. According to the complaint, EVO allegedly failed to comply with these requirements.
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 someone's biometrics are scanned over a span of five years before the filing of a lawsuit. When multiplied across entire workforces, such potential damage awards could be "annihilative," some judges have observed.
Plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Roberto Luis Costales and William H. Beaumont, of the firm of Beaumont Costales, of Chicago.