What happened?
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held in Clay v. Union Pacific Railroad Co. that the 2024 amendment to Section 20 of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act applies to cases that were already pending when the amendment took effect on August 2, 2024.
What does that mean?
What changed? Illinois strengthened pay transparency mandates, expanded personnel file access rights, tightened pay stub requirements, broadened anti-discrimination protections to cover family responsibilities and reproductive health decisions, added restrictions on AI used in hiring, tightened severance and confidentiality agreement rules, and extended employee rights regarding employer-issued devices under VESSA, all effective in 2025–2026.
Who is affected? Most Illinois employers, particularly those with 15 or more employees, and any business that uses third-party recruiting tools, applicant tracking software, or staffing agencies.
What should you do now? Conduct a focused employment law audit covering job postings, payroll stubs, personnel file procedures, employee handbooks, AI-enabled vendor contracts, severance templates, and company-device policies.
Most business owners assume lawsuits come from major failures.
They don’t.
They come from small, preventable breakdowns that escalate.
If your company is using AI without a policy, you are already behind
A year ago, AI policies were optional.
Today, they are quickly becoming expected.
Most business owners don’t consider themselves facing an employment issue.
Until they do.
And when they do, it’s usually costly, disruptive, and entirely preventable.
If your business is using AI, you are already taking on legal risk
Most companies do not realize this yet.
They think AI is:
AI adoption is not happening at the top. It is happening in the shadows.
Most executives think AI adoption is a strategic decision.
It is not.
Most contracts were not built for AI. That is the problem.
Right now, companies are layering AI into their business:
•drafting contracts with ChatGPT
You do not have an AI adoption problem. You have a visibility problem.
Most business owners assume AI adoption is controlled.
It is not.
