Seventh Circuit keeps truckers' fingerprint-privacy suit against Union Pacific alive

Truck drivers scored another data-privacy victory against Union Pacific, according to Land Line Media on Oct. 2 — the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that the railroad cannot escape their biometric privacy lawsuit.

The 2024 federal lawsuit alleges Union Pacific required fingerprint scans for truck drivers entering its intermodal facilities in Illinois to track and process loads — without written consent, without a data-retention policy, and while sharing the data with a third party. That runs against Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act, a 2008 law requiring informed written consent before collecting fingerprints, voiceprints, or face scans. Union Pacific argued it is exempt as a contractor “working for” a state agency or local government, citing a commuter-train contract and an overpass-design contract — but the court rejected the claim that the exemption covers all work done while holding such contracts. The case now proceeds.

This is not the first time truckers have won on BIPA: BNSF settled a similar suit for $75 million in 2024 after a jury awarded drivers $228 million before the court vacated the amount, and Old Dominion settled a driver fingerprint time-clock suit for $1.6 million. A separate 2020 BIPA class action against Union Pacific is still pending nearly seven years later.