Class Action Claims Pie Five Pizza’s Biometric Timekeeping System Violates Illinois Privacy Law

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Pie Five Restaurants, Inc. faces a proposed class action over its apparent policy of scanning workers’ fingerprints for timekeeping purposes without first providing statutory disclosures or obtaining consent to do so.

The lawsuit claims the defendant, the operator of a chain of fast-casual pizza restaurants, has run afoul of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, a law that since 2008 has governed how private entities handle individuals’ sensitive biometric data, such as fingerprints.

Despite having years to comply with the BIPA, the defendant, who collects worker fingerprints to unlock registers and clock the employees in and out of shifts and breaks, has overstepped the state privacy law by allegedly failing to:

• Inform workers in writing that their biometrics would be collected, stored and used;
• Inform workers of the specific purpose and length of time for which their fingerprint data would be collected, stored and used;
• Obtain a written release from employees to authorize the collection of their information; and
• Provide a publicly available retention schedule and guidelines for the destruction of the workers’ biometric data.

Per the case, Pie Five Restaurants’ biometric timekeeping system captures a new fingerprint each time a worker clocks in and then converts the fingerprint into data points before it’s compared against a template stored in the system to identify the worker. The suit says the defendant should have been well aware of its biometric privacy obligations under state law by May 2016, the beginning of the “class period,” especially since Facebook had been sued earlier that year for alleged BIPA violations and made headlines.

“Throughout the class period, BIPA was well known, and its obligations clear,” the complaint states.

The lawsuit looks to represent anyone identified in the defendant’s biometric system within the past five years.

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