Overview
- A federal judge certified three proposed Illinois classes in June 2026 and the Seventh Circuit denied Apple’s request for an immediate appeal on June 30, 2026, allowing the case to return to district court for merits proceedings.
- Plaintiffs say the Photos app’s People feature scans images to create and store unique face 'templates' on devices and that some of this data syncs through iCloud, which they say triggers Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
- The putative classes cover roughly 6.5 million Illinois residents across local-device and iCloud-related groups, and plaintiffs estimate statutory damages could total about $32.5 billion if violations and the number of offending records are proven.
- Apple argues its internal photo vectors cannot be used to recreate a person’s face or link to a name and therefore do not meet BIPA’s definition of biometric identifiers, and the company plans to press technical and legal defenses in district court.
- The case follows earlier BIPA suits against other tech firms and could reshape how companies build photo-organizing tools because BIPA allows $1,000 per negligent violation or $5,000 per intentional or reckless violation, which can quickly multiply across records.