Illinois Legislature Passes Milestone Biometric Privacy Amendment

SB2979 has passed Illinois’ House of Representatives, clearing the way for it to be signed into law. The bill is designed to significantly reduce certain liabilities under the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, aiming to alleviate what many business owners have regarded as an unnecessarily wide-ranging and burdensome piece of legislation.

Essentially, the bill would remove BIPA’s per-scan fee. Currently, a company that violates BIPA’s protections is subject to damages for each instance of the collection of an individual’s biometric data. This means that if a company is found to have failed to obtain written consent from an employee for the use of a fingerprint-scanning time clock, for example, the company could face a $1,000 fine for each and every time the employee clocked in or out.

The amendment would switch from a per-scan to a per-person penalty, meaning that the hypothetical company outlined above could be charged $1,000 for collecting the biometrics of that particular employee, regardless of how many times the employee’s finger was scanned.

Another key change: the amendment will allow companies to obtain consent electronically, and no longer require them to get “written” consent for the collection of biometric data.

“We can ensure that companies are held accountable when they break the law but also to ensure that the punishment fits the crime, that we are not putting a company out of business because of an honest mistake that they made,” explained the bill’s Senate sponsor, Sen. Bill Cunningham.

The bill passed through the Senate last month, and has now made it through the House in an overwhelming vote. Nine Republicans joined Democrats to approve the bill 81-30.

A number of the Republicans who voted against the bill argued that it didn’t actually go far enough in defanging BIPA, suggesting that it should apply retroactively to aid some of the businesses that have already suffered from massive fines.

The legislation will now proceed to Governor JB Pritzker’s office, where it will undergo one more round of “careful review,” according to a spokesperson.

Source: Chicago Tribune, WGEM

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May 17, 2024 – by Alex Perala