New Privacy Laws Could Be Kryptonite for Liability Coverage

We are halfway through 2023, and it’s already been another blockbuster year in the biometric litigation universe.

The main characters are back -- the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (‘BIPA’) and the justices of the Illinois Supreme Court. And the script has not changed much -- a business scans workers’ fingerprints or retina, a worker brings class action seeking hundreds of millions of dollars, and the business’s insurance company disappears without a trace.

But thanks to a (dynamic) duo of decisions from Illinois’ highest court, the stakes have never been higher. Adding to the complexity, the action is no longer contained to a single statutory scheme, as a new challenge to a previously untested law has arisen in New York City, and a potential new threat to companies lurks in the New York state legislature.