Chicago Partner Mary A. Smigielski provided commentary to Law.com on the influx of lawsuits alleging that the unauthorized capture and use of voiceprints constitutes a violation of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
Ms. Smigielski spoke with Law.com for its article titled “Surge of BIPA Voiceprint Claims May Succeed Despite Past Failures, Experts Say” and discussed the rise of BIPA litigation involving voice notes. She said this may stem from other BIPA claims becoming less appealing to attorneys after a 2024 amendment to the statute clarified that repeated scans of a person’s biometric data amount to a single violation.
Ms. Smigielski also said plaintiffs often struggle to succeed with these voiceprint cases because of the complexity of the hardware involved. “Until you dig into that to actually understand what is really happening from a hardware, software, engineering perspective,” she said, “you’re not going to know if there’s actually voice prints involved and whether it’s even covered by BIPA.”
Ms. Smigielski is a partner in the Chicago and Los Angeles offices of Lewis Brisbois, Vice Chair of the firm’s national Labor & Employment Practice, Co-Chair of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) Practice, and Chair of the Chicago Bar Association Labor & Employment Law Committee. She has a national practice and handles class and collective actions, single-plaintiff employment litigation and arbitrations, mediations, administrative charges, nationwide counseling and training, and sensitive workplace investigations, including at the C-Suite level. Having spent nearly a decade as in-house employment and business counsel for a multinational Fortune 50 company with responsibility for over 100,000 employees, Ms. Smigielski is uniquely positioned to recognize the challenges faced by our clients and is committed to achieving creative and cost-effective solutions, whether that involves legal compliance, negotiation, or the defense of sensitive litigation.
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