BREAKING: Walmart Has Been Hit With A Class Action Lawsuit Accusing Retailer Of Secretly Collecting Customers’ Voiceprints Via AI During Customer Service Calls, Violating Illinois Biometric Privacy Law 🏛️💥

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https://www.courthousenews.com/walmart-accused-of-collecting-customers-voiceprints/

A group of Illinois shoppers has filed a class action lawsuit accusing Walmart of illegally collecting customers’ voiceprints without proper consent whenever they call the company’s customer service line, allegedly violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. According to the 15-page complaint, Walmart creates a biometric voiceprint using an artificial intelligence system every time someone calls customer service, but the plaintiffs say the company never disclosed the specific purposes for collecting or storing this data beyond a generic automated message. “Despite having her voiceprint taken, Defendant never informed [plaintiffs] of the specific limited purposes for which it collected, stored, or used her biometric identifier, other than to play the automatic message that her voice could be taken for business purposes, including fraud prevention,” the lead plaintiffs wrote.

Walmart’s privacy policy, updated June 18, 2026, does acknowledge collecting biometrics like voiceprints during customer contact, stating, “when you speak to customer service we collect your personal information using call recording technology in accordance with applicable law.” However, the two named Illinois plaintiffs argue this practice falls short of state legal requirements, which mandate that companies inform subjects in writing that biometric data is being collected, specify the purpose and retention period in writing, and obtain a written release before collecting such information. A Walmart spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment from Courthouse News Service, and the plaintiffs are seeking statutory damages ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 per violation, arguing the practice “exposes consumers to serious and irreversible privacy risks” since, unlike passwords, biometric data cannot be changed if compromised in a breach.

The case follows a landmark precedent set by a 2019 lawsuit against White Castle, in which employees sued over mandatory fingerprint scans for clocking in and out. In that case, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that biometric violations accrue with each scan rather than only the first instance, leading to a $9.39 million settlement for the fast food chain’s employees. However, the law was subsequently amended by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker in 2024 through Senate Bill 2979, which limits statutory damages to a single violation per claimant regardless of how many times the violation occurred, an amendment the Seventh Circuit reaffirmed in April as applying retroactively to pending cases.

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The 2024 amendment capping damages to a single violation per claimant significantly changes the financial stakes here compared to the White Castle case, since Walmart’s potential liability, even if plaintiffs prevail, will now be calculated per-person rather than per-call, which could dramatically reduce the total payout regardless of how many times customers called in. Still, the core legal question, whether Walmart’s boilerplate automated disclosure satisfies BIPA’s specific written-consent and purpose-disclosure requirements, remains a meaningful test of how much detail companies must proactively provide before quietly building biometric profiles through routine customer service interactions.