For months now, employers and their counsel have been awaiting the Illinois Supreme Court's ruling in McDonald v. Symphony Bronzeville Park, LLC regarding whether the Illinois Workers' Compensation Act preempts claims for liquidated damages under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). On February 3, 2022, in a unanimous decision, the Court answered that question in the negative.
Generally, the Workers' Compensation Act provides the exclusive means by which an employee can recover damages for work-related injuries. Over the years, Illinois courts, including the state Supreme Court, have addressed whether and when an employee may bring a civil action for harm resulting from a work-related injury, and have held that employees may sue their employers outside of the Workers' Compensation Act if they can show that their injury was not accidental; did not arise from or was not sustained in the course of employment; or was not "compensable" under the Workers' Compensation Act. Courts have not often addressed the last exception—the question of "compensability." Therefore, it has been the subject of some debate whether "compensability" should be defined in terms of injuries that otherwise meet the requirements for coverage under the Workers' Compensation Act—because they are accidental injuries that arise from and were sustained in the course of employment—or should be construed as a subset of such injuries based on the type of harm suffered by the employee.
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