Major BIPA Amendment Passes House Committee

A proposed amendment to the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act — commonly known simply as BIPA — was passed by the state House Judiciary-Civil Committee this week, following its advancement by the state Senate a few weeks ago.

With the changes, BIPA violators will be held liable to a maximum fine of $1,000 for every person that has had their biometric information recorded without their express, written consent. This is a major change to the act as it currently exists, through which damages can be ordered for each individual violation of the act, meaning any single person can represent multiple infractions based on the number of times they were scanned.

Since BIPA became law several years ago, there have been a number of high-profile cases brought to the courts in Illinois. Defendants have ranged from tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook, to companies less likely to be associated with privacy violations, like The Home Depot, and Dr. Pepper.

Despite the proposed amendment, some Illinois business owners still have concerns over BIPA’s utility, going so far as to refer to the law as outdated.

“BIPA and the pending amendment is an iPhone 2 law that is attempting to regulate an iPhone 15 business world,” said Steve Schroeder, a small business owner in the state, in comments to a local outlet.

Other critics of the amendment argue it isn’t a strong enough change, as it lacks the ability to retroactively protect companies from possible past violations of BIPA, opening them up for more of the same lawsuits that saw massive settlements paid.

However, Sen. Bill Cunningham, D-Chicago, countered this criticism, saying that the courts can take any changes to the bill into account when deciding on liability charges, regardless of when the amendment is written into the law.

In July of 2022, Facebook increased its proposed settlement amount to $650 million — a $100 million increase over a previous settlement that was rejected a month prior by a U.S. District court judge, who argued that it was too low given the number of potential claimants and claims in Facebook’s class-action suit.

Source: KFVS12

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May 2, 2024 — by Tony Bitzionis