Yum Brands served class action lawsuit over employee fingerprint database

The parent company of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut was served with a new class action lawsuit this week over the employee fingerprint database it uses to clock workers in and out for their shifts.

A former employee says the company never sought, or got, his consent to keep his fingerprints in a database, which he says puts his personally identifiable information at risk. The worker filed a class action lawsuit in Illinois state court in Cook County on Monday, claiming Yum Brands Inc. is in violation of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).

“If [the] defendant’s database of digitized fingerprints were to fall into the wrong hands, by data breach or otherwise, the employees to whom these sensitive and immutable biometric identifiers belong could have their identities stolen, among other serious issues,” the class action lawsuit says.

Lawyers for Ronnell P., the lead plaintiff, say Yum Brands violated his and other employees’ rights to privacy by storing their biometric information in a fingerprint database without their knowledge or permission. They are asking the court to certify the case as a class action that would represent all other Yum Brands employees in Illinois who were unaware their fingerprints were being kept.

It is unclear how many current and former workers might be eligible to participate in the case, but the lawyers estimate there would likely be hundreds of them.

Yum Brands restaurants has been using fingerprint scanning devices to clock workers in and out since at least June 2017, when Ronnell began working for a KFC, he claims.

In 2008, state lawmakers enacted the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, which prohibits private entities from collecting biometric data from people without getting their informed written consent first.

If consent is given and the biometrics are collected, those that do the collecting are required to have a written policy for the retention and destruction of that information, and they are barred from disclosing it without written consent, and from profiting from disclosure even if consent is obtained.

The law also demands private entities protect all collected biometrics in a “similar, if not more protective, manner” than they do “other confidential and sensitive information,” such as Social Security numbers and passcodes.

Yum Brands failed to obtain its workers’ informed consent before collecting their biometric information in a fingerprint database and failed to make public a “retention schedule” outlining how and for how long the information would be kept, the class action lawsuit claims. Those actions put the plaintiff and proposed Class Members at some risk, it insists.

Ronnell “has no reason to believe defendant actually destroyed his biometric information, despite that the sole reason [he] provided his biometric information …  is now moot,” the class action lawsuit says. Ronnell stopped working at the KFC in March 2018. “Further, to the extent [Yum] uses an outside vendor to process its payroll, there is a significant risk plaintiff’s biometric identifiers have already been disseminated without his knowledge or consent.”

The plaintiff’s lawyers requested a jury trial and are seeking monetary damages of $1,000 to $5,000 for each violation of the biometric privacy act. They are also seeking a court order demanding Yum Brands alter its fingerprint database practices to comply with the law.

Do you work for KFC, Taco Bell or Pizza Hut? Does the restaurant use a fingerprint database to clock you in and out of work? Tell us about it in the comment section below.

Lead plaintiff Ronnell and the proposed Class Members are represented by Carl V. Malmstrom of Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLC; and Joseph I. Marchese and Philip L. Fraietta of Bursor & Fisher PA.

The Fingerprint Database Class Action Lawsuit is Ronnel P., et al. v. Yum Brands Inc., Case No. 2020-CH-6811, in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois; County Department, Chancery Division.

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