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  • District court declines to reconsider BIPA accrual ruling

    Courts

    On August 14, an Illinois District Court denied in part and granted in part a tech company’s motion to dismiss a class-action suit that alleged violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”). The complaint alleged that the tech giant failed to safeguard the facial data in its photo service as closely as it protected other types of data and violated its own policy governing biometric identifier storage. BIPA requires companies to store, transmit, and protect biometric data using the reasonable standard of care within the company’s industry and to protect that data in either the same or more protective manner as it protects other types of confidential data. 

    In permitting the complaint to move forward, the court noted that the defendant’s internal documents allegedly show that it made minimal investment in its photo service and made no attempt to identify flaws in the system. Further, the court referred to allegations in the complaint that the defendant devotes fewer resources and staffing to protecting the photo service. The court noted that the allegations were sufficient because the lack of protocols made consumers’ critical metadata “vulnerable to attacks.”

    In granting the motion related to violation of the defendant’s policies, the court noted that plaintiffs did not show they were personally injured by the alleged violation. The defendant’s policy requires it to delete files for accounts that have been abandoned for two years, for which image recognition was disabled, or where user deleted their photo account. However, the court concluded that the complaint did not allege that plaintiffs did any of these actions.

    Courts Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security BIPA Biometric Data Illinois Consumer Protection

  • Illinois Supreme Court declines to reconsider BIPA accrual ruling

    Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security

    On July 18, the Illinois Supreme Court declined to reconsider its February ruling, which held that under the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA or the Act), claims accrue “with every scan or transmission of biometric identifiers or biometric information without prior informed consent.” Three justices, however, dissented from the denial of rehearing, writing that the ruling leaves “a staggering degree of uncertainty” by offering courts and defendants little guidance on how to determine damages. The putative class action stemmed from allegations that the defendant fast food chain violated BIPA sections 15(b) and (d) by unlawfully collecting plaintiff’s biometric data and disclosing the data to a third-party vendor without first obtaining her consent. While the defendant challenged the timeliness of the action, the plaintiff asserted that “a new claim accrued each time she scanned her fingerprints” and her data was sent to a third-party authenticator, thus “rendering her action timely with respect to the unlawful scans and transmissions that occurred within the applicable limitations period.”

    In February, a split Illinois Supreme Court held that claims accrue under BIPA each time biometric identifiers or biometric information (such as fingerprints) are scanned or transmitted, rather than simply the first time. (Covered by InfoBytes here.) The dissenting judges wrote that they would have granted rehearing because the majority’s determination that BIPA claims accrue with every transmission “subvert[s] the intent of the Illinois General Assembly, threatens the survival of businesses in Illinois, and consequently raises significant constitutional due process concerns.” The dissenting judges further maintained that the majority’s February decision is confusing and lacks guidance for courts when determining damages awards. While the majority emphasized that BIPA does not contain language “suggesting legislative intent to authorize a damages award that would result in the financial destruction of a business,” it also said that it continues “to believe that policy-based concerns about potentially excessive damage awards under [BIPA] are best addressed by the legislature,” and that it “respectfully suggest[s] that the legislature review these policy concerns and make clear its intent regarding the assessment of damages under [BIPA].”

     

    Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security Courts State Issues Illinois BIPA Enforcement Consumer Protection Class Action

  • 7th Circuit: Insurer required to cover BIPA defense

    Courts

    On June 15, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld a district court’s ruling requiring an insurance company to defend an Illinois-based IT company against two putative class actions alleging violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The insurance company sued for a declaration that, under its business liability insurance policy, it has no obligation to indemnify or defend the IT company in the two class actions. Class members alleged the IT company acted as a vendor for a company that “scraped” more than 3 billion facial scans and converted them into biometric facial recognition identifiers, which were then paired to images on the internet and sold via a database to the Chicago Police Department, in violation of BIPA.

    The insurance company’s policy bars coverage for any distribution of material in violation of certain specific statutes or in violation of “[a]ny other laws, statutes, ordinances, or regulations” and asserted that this catch-all provision includes BIPA. The district court disagreed, ruling that the language of the policy’s statutory violations exclusion was “intractably ambiguous” and did not explicitly bar coverage of the underlying suits.

    On appeal, the 7th Circuit agreed that the district court was correct in determining that a plain-text reading of the insurance policy’s “broad” and ambiguous catch-all coverage exclusion for “personal or advertising injury” would “swallow a substantial portion of the coverage that the policy otherwise explicitly purports to provide.” The 7th Circuit held that “the broad language of the catch-all exclusion purports to take away with one hand what the policy purports to give with the other in defining covered personal and advertising injuries.”

    Although the 7th Circuit considered whether there was a “common element” related to privacy in the enumerated statutes that could be read to include BIPA, ultimately the appellate court determined that nothing in the exclusion language “points to privacy as the focus of the exclusion.”

    Courts Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security Appellate Seventh Circuit BIPA Insurance Consumer Protection Class Action Illinois

  • ID verifier to pay $28.5 million to settle BIPA allegations

    Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security

    On May 5, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois preliminarily approved an amended class action settlement in which an identification verification service provider agreed to pay $28.5 million to settle allegations that it violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). According to the plaintiffs, the defendant collected, stored, and or used class members’ biometric data without authorization when they uploaded photos and state IDs on a mobile app belonging to one of the defendant’s customers. After the court denied the defendant’s move to compel arbitration and determined the plaintiff had standing to pursue his BIPA claims, the parties entered into settlement discussions without the defendant admitting any allegations or liability. The court certified two classes: (i) Illinois residents who uploaded photos to the defendant through the app or website of a financial institution (class members will receive $15.7 million); and (ii) Illinois residents who uploaded photos through a non-financial institution (class members will receive $12.8 million). A final approval hearing will determine attorney’s fees and expenses and incentive awards.

    Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security Courts State Issues Illinois Class Action Settlement Consumer Protection BIPA

  • Illinois Supreme Court says BIPA claims accrue with every transmission

    Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security

    On February 17, the Illinois Supreme Court issued a split decision holding that under the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), claims accrue “with every scan or transmission of biometric identifiers or biometric information without prior informed consent.” The plaintiff filed a proposed class action alleging a defendant fast food chain violated BIPA sections 15(b) and (d) by unlawfully collecting her biometric data and disclosing the data to a third-party vendor without first obtaining her consent. According to the plaintiff, the defendant introduced a biometric-collection system that required employees to scan their fingerprints in order to access pay stubs and computers shortly after she began her employment in 2004. Under BIPA (which became effective in 2008), section 15(b) prohibits private entities from collecting, capturing, purchasing, receiving through trade, or otherwise obtaining “a person’s biometric data without first providing notice to and receiving consent from the person,” whereas Section 15(d) provides that private entities “may not ‘disclose, redisclose, or otherwise disseminate’ biometric data without consent.” While the plaintiff asserted that the defendant did not seek her consent until 2018, the defendant argued, among other things, that the action was untimely because the plaintiff’s claim accrued the first time defendant obtained her biometric data. In this case, defendant argued that plaintiff’s claim accrued in 2008 after BIPA’s effective date. Plaintiff challenged that “a new claim accrued each time she scanned her fingerprints” and her data was sent to a third-party authenticator, thus “rendering her action timely with respect to the unlawful scans and transmissions that occurred within the applicable limitations period.” The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois agreed with the plaintiff but certified its order for immediate interlocutory appeal after “finding that its decision involved a controlling question of law on which there is substantial ground for disagreement.”

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ultimately found that the parties’ competing interpretations of claim accrual were reasonable under Illinois law, and agreed that “the novelty and uncertainty of the claim-accrual question” warranted certification to the Illinois Supreme Court. The question certified to the high court asked whether “section 15(b) and (d) claims accrue each time a private entity scans a person’s biometric identifier and each time a private entity transmits such a scan to a third party, respectively, or only upon the first scan and first transmission[.]”

    The majority held that the plain language of the statute supports the plaintiff’s interpretation. “With the subsequent scans, the fingerprint is compared to the stored copy of the fingerprint. Defendant fails to explain how such a system could work without collecting or capturing the fingerprint every time the employee needs to access his or her computer or pay stub,” the high court said. The majority rejected the defendant’s argument that a BIPA claim is limited to the initial scan or transmission of biometric information since that is when the individual loses the right to control their biometric information “[b]ecause a person cannot keep information secret from another entity that already has it.” This interpretation, the majority wrote, wrongfully assumes that BIPA limits claims under section 15 to the first time a party’s biometric identifier or biometric information is scanned or transmitted. The Illinois Supreme Court further held that “[a]s the district court observed, this court has repeatedly held that, where statutory language is clear, it must be given effect, ‘even though the consequences may be harsh, unjust, absurd or unwise.’” However, the majority emphasized that BIPA does not contain language “suggesting legislative intent to authorize a damages award that would result in the financial destruction of a business,” adding that because “we continue to believe that policy-based concerns about potentially excessive damage awards under [BIPA] are best addressed by the legislature, . . . [w]e respectfully suggest that the legislature review these policy concerns and make clear its intent regarding the assessment of damages under [BIPA].”

    The dissenting judges countered that “[i]mposing punitive, crippling liability on businesses could not have been a goal of [BIPA], nor did the legislature intend to impose damages wildly exceeding any remotely reasonable estimate of harm.” “Indeed, the statute’s provision of liquidated damages of between $1000 and $5000 is itself evidence that the legislature did not intend to impose ruinous liability on businesses,” the dissenting judges wrote, cautioning that plaintiffs may be incentivized to delay bringing claims for as long as possible in an effort to increase actionable violations. Under BIPA, individuals have five years to assert violations of section 15—the statute of limitations recently established by a ruling issued by the Illinois Supreme Court earlier this month (covered by InfoBytes here).

    Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security Courts State Issues Illinois BIPA Enforcement Consumer Protection Class Action Appellate

  • Illinois Supreme Court sets five-year SOL for section 15 BIPA violations

    Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security

    On February 2, the Illinois Supreme Court held that under the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), individuals have five years to assert violations of section 15 of the statute. The plaintiff sued his former employer claiming that by scanning his fingerprints, the company violated section 15(a) of BIPA (which provides for the retention and deletion of biometric data), as well as sections 15(b) and 15(d) (which provide for the consensual collection and disclosure of biometric identifiers and biometric information). According to the plaintiff, the defendant allegedly failed to implement and adhere to a publicly available biometric information retention and destruction policy, failed to obtain his consent to collection his biometric data, and disclosed his data to third parties without his consent. The defendant moved to dismiss the complaint as untimely, arguing that “claims brought under [BIPA] concern violations of privacy, and therefore, the one-year limitations period in section 13-201 of the [Code of Civil Procedure (Code)] should apply to such claims under [BIPA] because section 13-201 governs actions for the ‘publication of matter violating the right of privacy.’”

    The circuit court disagreed, stating that the lawsuit was timely filed because the five-year limitations period codified in section 13-205 of the Code applied to violations of BIPA. While the circuit court agreed that BIPA is a privacy statute, it said section 13-201 of the Code applies to privacy claims where “publication” is an element of the complaint. Because the plaintiff’s complaint does not involve the publication of biometric data and does not assert invasions of privacy or defamation, the one-year limitations period should not apply, the circuit court said, further adding that BIPA is not intended “to regulate the publication of biometric data.” The circuit court also concluded that the five-year limitations period applied in this case because BIPA itself does not contain a limitations period.

    The defendant amended his complaint and eventually appealed. The appellate court ultimately concluded that the one-year limitations period codified in section 13-201 of the Code applies to claims under section 15(c) and 15(d) of BIPA “where ‘publication or disclosure of biometric data is clearly an element’ of the claim,” and that the five-year limitations period codified in section 13-205 of the Code governs actions brought under section 15(a), 15(b), and 15(e) (which provides data safeguarding requirements) of BIPA “because ‘no element of publication or dissemination’ exists in those claims.” The defendant continued to argue that BIPA is a privacy statute and as such, claims brought under section 15 of BIPA should be governed by the one-year limitations period codified in section 13-201 of the Code.

    In affirming in part and reversing in part the judgment of the appellate court, the Illinois Supreme Court applied the state’s “five-year catchall limitations period” to claims brought under BIPA. “[A]pplying two different time limitations periods or time-bar standards to different subsections of section 15 of [BIPA] would create an unclear, inconvenient, inconsistent, and potentially unworkable regime as it pertains to the administration of justice for claims under [BIPA],” the Illinois Supreme Court wrote.

    Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security Courts Illinois BIPA Statute of Limitations Class Action

  • Appellate court reverses BIPA decision

    Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security

    On November 30, the Illinois Court of Appeal for the Fourth Appellate District reversed and remanded a trial court’s decision to grant a defendant plating company’s motion for summary judgment in a Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) suit. The plaintiff began working for the defendant in 2014. From the beginning of his employment, the plaintiff clocked into his job using a fingerprint, but the defendant did not have a written retention-and-destruction schedule for biometric data until 2018. The plaintiff was subsequently terminated and then filed suit claiming that the defendant violated BIPA by failing to establish a retention-and-destruction schedule for the possession of biometric information until four years after it first possessed the plaintiff’s biometric data. The trial court granted the defendant’s motion for summary judgment, finding that section 15(a) of BIPA established no time limits by which a private entity must establish a retention-and-destruction schedule for biometric data. The plaintiff appealed.

    The appellate court reversed the trial court’s order, finding that Section 15(a) specified that a private entity “in possession of” biometric data must develop a written policy laying out its retention and destruction protocols, and the duty to develop a schedule is triggered by possession of the biometric data. The appellate court noted that its decision “is consistent with the statutory scheme, which imposes upon private entities the obligation to establish [BIPA]-compliant procedures to protect employees' and customers' biometric data.” The appellate court went on to note that it “can discern no rational reason for the legislature to have intended that a private entity ‘develop’ a ‘retention schedule and guidelines for permanently destroying’ (id. § 15(a)) biometric data at a different time from that specified in the notice requirement in section 15(b), which itself must inform the subject of the length of time for which the data will be stored (i.e., retained), etc.” The appellate court concluded “that the duty to develop a schedule upon possession of the data necessarily means that the schedule must exist on that date, not afterwards,” and stressed that this is “the only reasonable interpretation” in light of BIPA's “preventive and deterrent purposes.”

    Furthermore, the appellate court rejected the defendant’s argument that “the statutory duty is satisfied so long as a schedule exists on the day that the biometric data possessed by a defendant is no longer needed or the parties’ relationship has ended," stating that the statutory language “belies this interpretation.”

    Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security Courts Illinois BIPA Consumer Protection State Issues

  • District Court says university is a financial institution exempt from state privacy law

    Courts

    On November 4, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted a defendant university’s motion to dismiss Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act claims (BIPA), ruling that because the defendant participates in the Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid Program, it is a “financial institution” subject to Title V of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) and therefore exempt from BIPA. Plaintiff sued the defendant claiming the university used technology to collect biometric identifiers to surveil students taking online exams. According to the plaintiff, the defendant’s use of this technology violated students’ biometric privacy rights because the defendant did not obtain students’ written consent to collect and use that data, failed to disclose what happens with the data after collection, and failed to adhere to BIPA’s retention and destruction requirements.

    The court disagreed and dismissed the putative class action. The court explained that the defendant’s direct student lending and participation in the Federal Student Aid Program allows it to qualify as a “financial institution,” defined by the GLBA as “any institution the business of which is engaging in financial activities.” As such, it is expressly exempt from BIPA. The court rejected plaintiff’s argument that the defendant did not fit within this definition because it is in the business of higher education rather than financial activities because at least five other courts that have also concluded that “institutions of higher education that are significantly engaged in financial activities such as making or administering student loans” qualify for exemption. The court also referred to a 2000 FTC rule issued when the Commission had both enforcement and rulemaking authority under the GLBA. The rule considered colleges and universities to be financial institutions if they “appear to be significantly engaged in lending funds to consumers,” which the court found to be “particularly persuasive because it evidences longstanding, consistent, and well-reasoned interpretation of the statute that it had been tasked to administer.”

    Courts State Issues Illinois Class Action BIPA GLBA Department of Education FTC Student Lending Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security

  • District Court enters $228 million judgment in BIPA class action

    Courts

    On October 12, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois entered a judgment for $228 million after a jury found that a defendant railway company committed 45,600 reckless or intentional violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The jury’s judgment, which does not include pre-judgment interest, was entered against the defendant in the amount of $228 million (BIPA provides for statutory damages of $5,000 for every willful or reckless violation and $1,000 for every negligent violation). Class members consisting of more than 44,000 truck drivers alleged in their second amended complaint that the defendant violated BIPA when it collected, captured, and stored their biometric identifiers and biometric information without obtaining their informed written consent or providing written disclosures explaining the purpose and duration of such use. The defendant countered that it should not be held liable for biometric data collection conducted on its behalf by a third-party contractor because BIPA does not impose liability for the acts of a third party. The court disagreed, ruling, among other things, that BIPA’s language “makes clear that [the defendant] need not have ‘collected’ the data itself to be liable,” and that there is evidence that the defendant “ultimately called the shots on whether and how biometric information is collected.” 

    Courts State Issues Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security BIPA Illinois Class Action

  • District Court grants final approval in BIPA class action

    Courts

    On September 1, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted final approval of a $6.8 million class action settlement in a biometric privacy data suit. According to the plaintiff’s memorandum of law in support of her unopposed motion for final approval of the settlement, the plaintiff alleged that the defendant violated Illinois law by collecting fingerprint scan data from Illinois users of vending machine systems without written notice and consent. According to the settlement, class members include all individuals who scanned their finger(s) in one or more of defendants’ vending systems in Illinois between August 23, 2014 and November 2021, which totals approximately 63,450 individuals. Each class member will receive approximately $413, and the settlement includes roughly $2.2 million in attorney fees for class counsel.

    Courts Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security State Issues Illinois BIPA Class Action Settlement

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