Resistance is NOT Futile! Woman Sues White Castle for Using Her Fingerprints Without Her Consent – Burger Slinger Could Lose $17 BILLION
American burger-slinging giant White Castle is almost certainly regretting its decisions about employee monitoring after the Illinois Supreme Court Friday issued an opinion opening the fast "food" corp up to potentially billions in fines. In what we imagine was a gut-wrenching decision for White Castle's legal team, the court ruled in a 4-3 decision that White Castle could be held accountable for every instance in which it scanned the fingerprints of its 9,500 employees without their consent. Illinois has required companies to obtain permission before collecting or transmitting an individual's biometric data since 2008. The fine for failing to do so was between $1,000 and $5,000 per infraction, depending on the circumstances. In the proposed class action case, the plaintiff sued White Castle on accusations the fast-food chain had "unlawfully collected her biometric data and unlawfully disclosed her data to its third-party vendor" without her consent for several years after implementing fingerprint-scanning for employee computer access, according to the Illinois Supreme Court document.