On April 1, 2026, the Seventh Circuit settled a key question left open by the August 2024 amendment to the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA, 740 ILCS 14/ et seq.) with its decision in Clay v. Union Pacific Railroad Co. Following well-established Illinois precedent on retroactivity, the Seventh Circuit held that the 2024 amendment to Section 20, which limits plaintiffs to “at most, one recovery” for repeated collections of the same biometric identifier from the same person, was a remedial “procedural” change rather than a substantive change to Illinois law. Accordingly, the Seventh Circuit held that the amendment applies retroactively to cases that were pending at the time of its enactment.

The Seventh Circuit’s decision focused on two aspects of the amendment. First, the Seventh Circuit observed that the legislature amended BIPA’s liquidated damages provision in Section 20, while at the same time leaving untouched the “substantive standards for liability” in Section 15. Second, the Seventh Circuit also stressed that the amendment’s focus on remedies—limiting an aggrieved person to “at most, one recovery under this Section”—did not alter the scope of liability. 

This decision provides clarity to litigants in the wake of the 2024 BIPA amendments, and it is a significant win for companies subject to potential liability under BIPA. The decision confirms that plaintiffs, whose cases were pending at the time the amendment was enacted, are limited to “at most, one recovery”: collapsing thousands of per-scan violations into a single recovery of no more than $1,000 per person for a negligent violation and $5,000 for a willful violation, and dramatically reducing potential damages for companies that previously faced “annihilative liability” under the per-scan accrual theory established in Cothron v. White Castle. Additionally, the Seventh Circuit emphasized that BIPA statutory awards within the court’s discretion and are not mandatory, providing an additional layer of protection to defendants.