A second former Mariano's employee is suing the US grocery chain, alleging it violates an Illinois privacy law by not obtaining employee consent related to fingerprint data.The plaintiff, Thomas Doporcyk, alleges that “Mariano's disregards their employees' statutorily protected privacy rights and unlawfully collects, stores and uses their biometric data,” according to a complaint filed June 9 in Cook County Circuit Court.Mariano's required Doporcyk to check in and out of work by scanning his fingerprints, according to the suit. Mariano's requires all Illinois employees, salaried and hourly, to clock in through a fingerprint scanner.Doporcyk, whose lawsuit says he was a pharmacy manager in the Chicago area from December 2013 to February 2016, alleges that Mariano's violates the Biometric Information Privacy Act, which aims to protect such Illinois residents' identifier data as fingerprints, retinal scans and other labels that can typically be altered only by surgery.Doporcyk's complaint alleges that Mariano's did not inform him of how long and for what reason his fingerprints would be collected and stored, and also failed to inform him that his biometric data was being given to Kronos, a third party. That method of verifying employee's identity exposes them to serious privacy risks, particularly if hackers target the company that makes the machines, the suit says.In May, the owners of the Mariano's supermarket chain were taken to federal court a class action lawsuit brought by one of its workers, who claimed the Chicago area grocer has been improperly requiring its employees to use their fingerprints to check in and out for work, without getting the employees' permission to store their biometric data.On May 11, Roundy's Supermarkets, a subsidiary of national supermarket giant Kroger, and parent company of the Mariano's brand, removed to federal court in Chicago a lawsuit first filed in Cook County Circuit Court.That action had initially been brought in March by plaintiff Norman Baron, who had worked at the Mariano's store in Hoffman Estates as a food server from 2013-2016, when he quit his job. He is represented in the action by attorneys Ilan Chorowsky and Mark Bulgarelli, of Progressive Law Group LLC, of Evanston.
US supermarket faces second lawsuit over employee fingerprint data
