Illinois Court Outlines Limits of Biometric Privacy Exemption

Contractors are excluded from liability under Illinois’ biometric privacy law only for actions that fall in the scope of their work for the government, an Illinois appeals court found.

A contractor doesn’t need to exclusively do government work for the exemption to apply, Justice Matthew Bertani wrote on Tuesday in a unanimous decision joined by Justices Liam Brennan and Linda Davenport.

But it “is not exempt when it violates the Act while pursuing private undertakings outside of its government contractual responsibilities,” Bertani wrote.

Cornerstone Services Inc. warned that such an interpretation—exempting some aspects of a contractor’s operations but not others—would ...