As Biometric Lawsuits Pile Up, Companies Eye Adoption with Care
A spate of large Biometric Information Privacy Act settlements in Illinois and the prospect of future legislation in other U.S. jurisdictions are forcing companies to think long and hard about whether—and how—to roll out biometric technology.
Employers with hundreds or thousands of employees sometimes turn to biometric timekeeping systems, which use fingerprint, face, or palm scans to verify workers’ identities, to save time and cut down on fraud. But those tools and ones like it are being reconsidered in the wake of high volumes of litigation, recent plaintiff-friendly decisions, and other legal risks, attorneys say.
[...]
Although future regulations and state laws may cause more companies to pause and beef up their compliance programs, biometrics are still useful for businesses and likely aren’t going away, said David Oberly, an attorney at Blank Rome LLP in Cincinnati.
“Ideally, companies will put compliance preparations in place before new regulations come online,” Oberly said. “There’s a sense of what’s at stake now.”
To read the full article, please click here.
“As Biometric Lawsuits Pile Up, Companies Eye Adoption with Care,” by Jake Holland was published in Bloomberg Law on February 9, 2022.