On September 26, 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued one of the first decisions to date on a motion in limine filed in Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) class action litigation in Rogers v. BNSF Ry. Co., No. 19 CV 3083, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 173322 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 26, 2022).

The opinion—which ruled that vicarious liability may be imposed against a defendant that is alleged to have violated BIPA’s notice and consent requirements—continues the trend of courts interpreting the text of BIPA in an extremely expansive fashion. More importantly, the ruling further broadens the scope of liability exposure faced by entities for running afoul of Illinois’s biometric privacy statute, and makes it imperative that the increasing risks stemming from potential vicarious liability claims are addressed before commencing any operations which involve the utilization of third-party biometrics vendors.