Year In Review: 2024 BIPA Litigation Takeaways

Illinois's Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) continues to drive a wave of privacy-related litigation across the United States, though a 2024 amendment to the act—the first since BIPA's enactment in 2008—may slow the pace of cases in the years ahead.

As we explain below, the BIPA amendment drastically limits the potential for large damages awards under the act by redefining the repeated collection or transmission of the same biometric data by the same party as a single BIPA violation. However, courts are split over whether the amendment applies retroactively to violations that occurred prior to the amendment's enactment, and resolution of that issue will have a significant impact on the volume of BIPA cases moving forward.