On Friday, June 23, 2023, U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp Jr. denied a motion to dismiss Plaintiffs’ claims under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), thereby allowing the class action against Defendants Amazon.com Inc., Amazon.com Services LLC, and Amazon Web Services Inc. to proceed in federal court.
In his ruling, Judge Tharp found that Plaintiffs’ complaint plausibly alleged violations of BIPA:
“Given the Gorgases’ other allegations, including that each defendant used and sold the Rekognition software and improved that technology through use of the Gorgases’ biometric data, the Court finds that the allegations in the complaint give rise to a plausible claim that the defendants disseminated the data amongst themselves and other Amazon entities.”
In denying Defendants’ motion to dismiss, Judge Tharp also rejected Amazon’s claims that Plaintiffs failed to distinguish each Defendant’s conduct:
“The defendants argue that, at the very least, the Section 15(d) claims against AWS [Amazon Web Services] must be dismissed because AWS cannot disseminate data to itself. But the Gorgases allege that the defendants, including AWS, disseminated data to ‘other Amazon entities,’ which could include Amazon.com, Inc., Amazon.com Services, LLC, or others. The argument is therefore without merit.”
Judge Tharp referred the case to a magistrate judge who will schedule and supervise discovery as well as any settlement conference the parties may wish to pursue.
Plaintiffs filed this biometric privacy case against Amazon in 2022, alleging among other things that Defendants violated BIPA by collecting, storing, and disseminating employees’ biometric data without notice or consent. A claim alleging that Defendants sold or otherwise profited from Plaintiffs’ biometric data has been remanded to Illinois state court.
The federal class action, Gorgas v. Amazon.Com, Inc., No. 22 CV 5159, is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. For more information and updates, please visit our website.