Facebook BIPA settlement (USD 650 million)

USD 650M

Settlement fund, approved 26 February 2021

N.D. Cal. final approval order

~USD 345

Payment per approved claimant

Settlement administrator, 2021

1.6M

Approximate class members who filed claims

Court filings

What happened?

From 2011 Facebook's Tag Suggestions feature scanned uploaded photos, computed a face template for each face and matched it against templates of the user's friends to suggest tags. Illinois users sued in 2015, arguing that creating and storing a face template is collecting a biometric identifier and that BIPA requires informed written consent and a public retention schedule, neither of which Facebook had. The cases were consolidated in the Northern District of California under Facebook's forum clause, with Illinois law governing.

1. 2015-04

   Suits filed

   Three Illinois users sue; cases consolidated in San Francisco.

2. 2018-04-16

   Class certified

   Judge Donato certifies a class of Illinois users with face templates.

3. 2019-08-08

   Ninth Circuit

   Patel v Facebook holds that a BIPA violation is a concrete injury for Article III standing.

4. 2020-01

   Settlement announced

   USD 550 million, later raised after the judge questioned the amount.

5. 2021-02-26

   Final approval

   USD 650 million approved; Facebook had made face recognition opt-in in 2019.

6. 2021-11

   Feature discontinued

   Meta announces the end of facial recognition on Facebook and deletion of templates.

What did the courts decide?

Two rulings mattered. In 2018 the district court certified the class, rejecting Facebook's argument that each user's injury was individual. In August 2019 the Ninth Circuit held in Patel v Facebook that BIPA protects a concrete privacy interest, so a user whose face template was created without consent has standing in federal court even without further harm, consistent with the Illinois Supreme Court's reading in Rosenbach v Six Flags. With BIPA's damages of USD 1,000 to 5,000 per violation and millions of class members, the exposure drove the settlement.

Why does it matter for face search?

• It established that computing a face embedding from a photo is collecting a biometric identifier under BIPA, whatever the company calls it.
• It showed BIPA's statutory damages can reach nine figures even for a feature users found useful, which is why face search engines avoid Illinois or block Illinois faces (see ACLU v Clearview).
• It set the template for later settlements, including Google's (see Rivera v Google).

What happened next?

Facebook made face recognition opt-in for all users in September 2019 and, in November 2021, Meta announced it would shut the feature down and delete more than a billion face templates. Illinois later amended BIPA in August 2024 to limit accrual to one violation per person per method of collection, a change prompted by Cothron v White Castle. Texas pursued Meta separately under its own biometric statute and settled for USD 1.4 billion in July 2024.