A California federal judge issued final approval Friday in a $650 million Facebook class action privacy settlement, with an order to get at least $345 to each of nearly 1.6 million Illinois class members “as expeditiously as possible.”
Chicago attorney Jay Edelson, who filed the initial lawsuit against Facebook nearly six years ago, said the checks could be in the mail within two months — barring an appeal over the court’s decision.
In his ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge James Donato called it one of the largest privacy settlements ever and a “landmark result” that will get at least $345 into the hands of every class member, pending a final accounting of claims and expenses.
“Overall, the settlement is a major win for consumers in the hotly contested area of digital privacy,” Donato wrote.
In April 2015, Edelson filed a lawsuit against Facebook in Cook County Circuit Court on behalf of plaintiff Carlo Licata, alleging the social media giant’s use of facial tagging features without consent was not allowed under Illinois privacy law. The case was moved to Chicago federal court and then California federal court, where it attained class-action status.
The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act is among the strictest such laws in the U.S., and requires companies to get permission before using technologies such as facial recognition to identify customers.
The settlement class included about 6.9 million Facebook users in Illinois for whom the social network created and stored a face template after June 7, 2011. To qualify, Facebook users had to live in the state for at least six months over the last nine years.
Nearly 1.6 million claim forms were filed by the Nov. 23 deadline, representing about 22% of eligible Illinois Facebook users.
Out of the $650 million Facebook agreed to pay, Donato awarded $97.5 million in attorneys’ fees and about $915,000 in expenses. The court also awarded $5,000 to each of the three named plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The rest is to be distributed to all class members equally.
“It’s a big deal,” Edelson said. “It sends a pretty clear message that in Illinois, biometric privacy rights are here to stay.”
