The Illinois Supreme Court recently opened the floodgates for class actions under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) and created potentially catastrophic exposure for Illinois businesses. In a close 4-3 ruling, the landmark decision in Latrina Cothron v. White Castle System Inc. holds that every individual scan or transmission of biometric data made without the proper disclosures amounts to a separate violation of BIPA. This Update explains the ruling and its substantial, wide-ranging implications for companies that do business in Illinois or handle biometric data of Illinois residents, including how this decision affects businesses from data privacy, employment law, and insurance perspectives.
The White Castle Decision
The White Castle case is a putative class action filed in 2018 by Latrina Cothron, a former employee of White Castle System, Inc. The suit alleges that White Castle violated sections 15(b) and 15(d) of BIPA by using a system that required its employees to scan their fingerprints to access their pay stubs and computers, which led to the collection and disclosure of employees’ biometric data without their consent and without providing the disclosures required under BIPA. White Castle argued that the lawsuit was untimely under BIPA’s statute of limitations because Ms. Cothron’s claim “accrued” in 2008, when White Castle first obtained her biometric data. Ms. Cothron argued that her suit was timely because a new BIPA violation occurred each...
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