News and journalism
7th Circuit Confirms BIPA Amendment Has Retroactive Application
Paul Hastings, 2026
Read the originalRead on October 17, 2026
- What it is
- A law firm client alert on the Seventh Circuit's decision on the 2024 amendment to the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (SB 2979). It quotes the amendment's single-violation language and reports that the court applied the damages limit to cases already pending when the amendment took effect.
- How much weight it carries
- Written by a major US privacy law practice and quotes the statute's amended text. It is a secondary summary, not the Illinois statute or the court opinion, and we could not open either from our tools. Check the current statute before relying on it.
Facts taken from this source
- The Seventh Circuit held that the 2024 amendment limiting BIPA damages is a procedural change and must be applied to cases that were pending when the amendment was enacted.
“The court held that the amendment limiting potential damages was a procedural change to the law and therefore must be applied retroactively to cases pending when the amendment was enacted.” (Opening summary of the court's decision)
- Under the 2024 amendment to Illinois BIPA (SB 2979), a private entity that collects the same biometric identifier or biometric information from the same person by the same method in more than one instance commits only one violation, and the aggrieved person can recover at most once.
“the same biometric identifier or biometric information from the same person using the same method of collection in violation of BIPA only commits one single violation” (Quotation of the amended statutory text)