On January 6, 2021, a group of seventeen democrats and seven republicans introduced in the New York assembly a new bill, A.B. 27, the “Biometric Privacy Act.” The bill (available for download here) is very similar to the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) which has spawned much litigation, including many class actions lawsuits. In summary, the bill proposes to regulate private entities’ use of “biometric identifiers” and “biometric information,” which are terms that are specifically defined in the bill by reference to the types of data that each term includes and excludes.
If enacted in its current form, the bill would become only the second biometric privacy act in the United States to provide a private right of action and plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees for successful litigants.
Read Lydia de la Torre‘s fantastic analysis about this potential game changer here.