Fingerprint “Time Clock” Garners Class Action

An employment case filed in the Northern District of Illinois has opened a “new employment frontier,” says a post from Holland & Knight. The plaintiff in a putative class action alleges that Roundy’s, a national supermarket chain, violated an Illinois state law when it failed to satisfy certain legal conditions in the course of setting up a worker time keeping system that used employee fingerprints. The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act says that employers who want to collect or store biometric data must, among other requirements, get written consent and inform the subject of the purpose of the collection, and how long the data will be kept. Damages can be substantial, as they are figured “per violation.”Texas has a similar law, although with no private right of action, and other states are considering laws similar to the one in Illinois. “With the increasing awareness of such laws by the plaintiffs’ bar,” write attorneys Jennifer J Froehlich and Phillip M Schreiber, “it is important that employers using or considering the use of biometric data in the workplace ensure compliance with any state or local laws governing the use, retention and destruction of that data.”