A bill (SB2979) amending Illinois’ Biometric Information and Privacy Act (“BIPA”), passed by both houses of the legislature on May 16 and now on Governor J.B. Pritzker’s desk, effectively overturns a recent Illinois Supreme Court ruling that could have had a catastrophic effect on many companies operating in Illinois.
Reacting to implicit direction from the Illinois high court in its decision in Cothron v. White Castle Systems, Inc., 2023 IL 128004, SB2979 clarified what many previously had viewed as ambiguous statutory language concerning the number of occurrences each BIPA violation constituted. SB2979 specifies that unlawful collection or disclosure of an individual’s biometric identifier or biometric information constitutes a single BIPA violation regardless of how many times it is repeated. Cothron, in contrast, held that a private entity violates BIPA “with every scan or transmission of biometric identifiers or biometric information without