5 BIPA Cases That Moved the Needle in 2020
A $650 million Facebook settlement and appellate rulings on standing and preemption were among the major developments in the evolving landscape of biometric privacy litigation in Illinois in 2020, as the state's landmark law exploded to national prominence.
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"For a statute that's been around for years, suddenly it's everywhere. You don't want to be caught unaware," said Jeff Rosenthal, a Blank Rome LLP attorney who leads the firm's biometric privacy team. "2020 was a really important year in this area of law."
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Rosenthal told Law360 that despite the consensus in the lower courts, he doesn't think the matter is entirely settled. The Illinois appellate court may even expand upon the ruling in the future, the way the Seventh Circuit did after Bryant.
"We're slowly seeing the BIPA landscape develop which laws will result in preemption and which will not," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if some similar clarification happens."
Labor Law Preemption An Emerging Trend
Rosenthal cited an Illinois federal judge's May decision to toss ramp supervisors' claims that Southwest Airlines violated BIPA as an important 2020 ruling that may have been overlooked, after the judge sent the dispute to an adjustment board because a union may have consented to the practice on the employees' collective behalf.
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"It's not as sexy or headline-grabbing as some of the other decisions coming out of this space, but these decisions about where the case should be brought, dispute resolution, arbitration, it has real implications for the outcome of a case," Rosenthal said.
And it comes in the wake of the Seventh Circuit's similar finding last year in another BIPA suit against Southwest, Miller et al. v. Southwest Airlines Co.
"Miller was really the first one at the circuit level to put their stamp on the preemption argument," Rosenthal said. "With Crooms, now we're talking about a trend."
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"5 BIPA Cases That Moved the Needle in 2020," by Celeste Bott was published in Law360 on December 17, 2020.