In a landmark ruling, the Illinois Supreme Court today held that consumers can sue for violations of their privacy under the state’s biometric privacy law, even if no actual harm could be shown.
The case, Rosenbach v. Six Flags Entertainment Corp., concerned a 14-year-old boy who was asked to scan his thumb into a biometric data capture system before receiving a season pass to a Six Flags amusement park. The boy and his mother claimed they were not informed of the purpose and length of term for which his fingerprint had been collected and neither of them had signed a release for the taking of the biometric information, in violation of the state’s Biometric Privacy Information Act.