Chicago, Ill. (September 23, 2025) - Chicago/Los Angeles Partner Mary Smigielski recently spoke with Lexology for an article examining the decline in class action lawsuits brought under Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) following a 2024 amendment that limits the damages plaintiffs in such cases can recover.
The article, titled "BIPA complaints fall after 2024 amendment, but privacy risks remain," noted that new BIPA complaint filings have fallen by 59 percent since the enactment of the amendment, which reduced the potential liability private entities face to a single recovery per individual affected, assuming the same biometric identifier is collected using the same method.
"The amendment reduces the stacking of damages, so to speak, and the per scan damages that an individual or a class could allege for a supposed BIPA violation," Ms. Smigielski, who co-chairs Lewis Brisbois' BIPA Practice, told Lexology.
In addition to co-chairing Lewis Brisbois' BIPA Practice, Ms. Smigielski leads Lewis Brisbois' employment practice in Chicago and is the Midwest Regional Chair of the Firm's national Labor & Employment Practice. Her practice involves the defense of class/collective actions and single-plaintiff employment litigation, administrative charges, nationwide employment counseling, training, and sensitive workplace investigations, including at the C-Suite level.
Read the full Lexology article here (subscription may be required).