Illinois Supreme Court rules that companies can be sued for collecting biometric data without opt-in consent, even if no tangible injury was demonstrated
Privacy advocates won a crucial court victory on Friday, as the Illinois Supreme Court dismissed a case that would have pared …
Context & Ripple Effects
This ruling is the capstone of a years-long fight over Facebook's photo-tagging practices: a judge first held that Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act applied to the company's facial recognition system back in 2016, and a federal judge then certified an Illinois-resident class action over it in June 2018. What remained unresolved was whether plaintiffs had to show actual harm — and by answering no, the Illinois Supreme Court keeps that class action alive on statutory violation alone.
The decision also cements what a later Reuters review found: among US states governing corporate biometric screening, Illinois stands out as the one banning collection without consent — and now the only one where that ban carries a private right of action enforceable without proof of injury.
First-order effects
- Companies collecting fingerprints, faceprints, or voiceprints from Illinois residents — Facebook foremost among them — can now be sued per violation without demonstrating any tangible injury, converting technical consent lapses into potentially massive aggregate damages.
Second-order effects
- Businesses facing BIPA exposure will press the legislature for relief, and the pressure pays off years later when Illinois' governor signs a bill significantly curbing the statute's penalties for improper collection and use.
Third-order effects
- If strict-liability biometric statutes spread, they create a template for privacy enforcement through class litigation rather than regulator action — while the eventual penalty rollback shows legislatures recalibrating such laws once damages scale beyond what drafters intended.
The trend: State biometric privacy laws are being tested in court as strict-liability regimes, with litigation-driven damages triggering subsequent legislative pullback.