biometric hand system

The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that under the state's biometrics law, plaintiffs don't need to show actual injury in order  to recover damages.

On Jan. 25, the Illinois Supreme Court agreed that a 14-year-old boy's rights were violated under the Biometric Information Privacy Act when a Gurnee, Illinois, Six Flags collected and stored his fingerprint for repeat-entry access into the park without issuing prior required notice and release.

Illinois' Biometric Privacy Information Act was enacted in 2008 and requires private entities, in part, to give written notice regarding when and what biometric information is collected or stored. Entities must also receive a written release from the person whose information is collected, according to the opinion.

In a Lake County, Illinois, circuit court, the boy's mother, who appeared on his behalf, sought damages and injunctive relief under the act and common-law action for unjust enrichment because the theme park never follow the law's protocol.

Defendant Six Flags Entertainment Corp., according to the state Supreme Court opinion, read the act as “evincing an intention by the Legislature to limit a plaintiff's right to bring a cause of action to circumstances where he or she has sustained some actual, damage, beyond violation of the rights conferred by the statue, as the result of the defendant's conduction.”

The circuit court denied the plaintiff's damages and injunctive relief motions. Later, the plaintiffs sought interlocutory review in the appellate court, asking if a person is aggrieved under the biometric law for statutory liquidated damages and injunctive relief when the only injury they allege is a violation of the act.

The appellate court ruled a plaintiff is only aggrieved and can pursue damages or injunctive relief under the act when it “must be more than a 'technical violation of the act,'” according to the state Supreme Court's opinion.

The state Supreme Court disagreed, writing that the appellate court's and defendants' reasoning added conditions and limitations the Legislature didn't express and interpreted the law inconsistently with the objectives of the statute .

“When a private entity fails to adhere to the statutory procedures, as defendants are alleged to have done here, 'the right of the individual to maintain [his or] her biometric privacy vanishes into thin air. The precise harm the Illinois legislature sought to prevent is then released.' This is no mere 'technicality.' The injury is real and significant,” the opinion said.

Actual injury or damage beyond violation of the action isn't needed, and would require disregarding the “commonly understood and accepted meaning of the term 'aggrieved,'” the state Supreme Court held.