For some time now, employers have been the main target of a relentless wave of class action lawsuits by employees alleging violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) in connection with the use fingerprint scans for timekeeping purposes. Recently, however, employees and the plaintiff’s bar have added a new primary target for such suits: third-party biometric timekeeping technology vendors. To date, vendors’ ability to avoid or limit liability under BIPA has been mixed. But there are several defenses that – while still being developed and refined by the courts – may prove useful for vendors to extricate themselves from bet-the-company BIPA suits or, at a minimum, trim the scope of potential liability.

Originally published in the February/March 2021 edition of Pratt’s Privacy & Cybersecurity Law Report (Vol. 7, No. 2.