Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

In a welcome win for defendants litigating claims under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”), earlier this month a Northern District of Illinois magistrate judge denied a plaintiff’s motion to compel communications between defendant Union Pacific Railroad Company (“Union Pacific”) and the vendors that provided it with fingerprint-activated security gates.  Fleury v. Union Pac. R.R. Co., No. 20 C 390, 2024 WL 1620613, at *4-6 (N.D. Ill. Apr. 15, 2024).  In so doing, the court implicitly affirmed that, in a BIPA lawsuit, the common interest doctrine presumptively protects the communications between biometric technology vendors and their customers, regardless of which entities are named as defendants.  This ruling is a powerful tool in the BIPA landscape for employers (who are typically the customers in this scenario) and other defendants alike because it supports the ability of BIPA defendants to coordinate their defense strategy with entities who share their legal interest.  The opinion is also a good reminder, however, that vendors and their customers should use best practices early on in a BIPA litigation to maximize the scope of the common interest doctrine.

California employers must revamp their sick leave policies ahead of the New Year.  On October 4, 2023, Governor Newsom signed SB 616 into law, thereby amending the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014.  The new law goes into effect January 1, 2024.

As we reported in September, effective January 1, 2023, employers face a host of pay disclosure and recordkeeping obligations.  The DLSE, the agency in charge of implementing the new law (codified at California Labor Code section 432.3), recently published guidance on the parameters of the new law.