BIPA Update: Illinois Senate's BIPA Amendment Passes The House

Senate Bill 2979 ("SB2979"), the recently proposed amendment to the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act's ("BIPA") liquidated damages provision, passed the Illinois House of Representatives by a 81-30 vote.¹

To recap from our previous installment of this article series, the Illinois Supreme Court's Cothron decision previously held that each BIPA violation constituted a separate ground for damages.² The result was that hundreds of businesses operating in Illinois have faced millions of dollars in exposure based on mechanical applications of the statutory text.³ Since BIPA's text as currently worded provides for $1,000 to $5,000 in statutory liquidated damages each time an employee scans his or her biometrics, or information deemed to be biometrics under the statute, into a timekeeping or security device, multiple "violations" quickly accumulate on a daily basis. Millions of dollars worth of theoretical exposure could result where employees scanned in or out