Union Pacific Stuck With Truckers’ Biometric Privacy Lawsuit

Union Pacific Railroad Co. must face a lawsuit alleging it collected the fingerprints of truckers making deliveries to its intermodal facilities without their consent in violation of an Illinois privacy law.

The railroad’s status as a contractor with the Chicago-area commuter-train system and its participation in a public-private partnership to improve Chicago-area railroads didn’t exempt it from the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, Judge Jorge L. Alonso of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois said Monday.

Alonso denied Union Pacific’s motion for summary judgment, and reserved a related issue—whether the railroad was exempt as a result ...