Twenty-two U.S. states and the District of Columbia told a judge they are opposed to a settlement that would resolve privacy claims against facial recognition company Clearview AI without a concrete plan to award class action damages.
The states are not a party in the case, which was brought on behalf of millions of Americans who said Clearview violated their privacy, but they said class members “should be guaranteed fair and meaningful compensation.”
Attorneys for Clearview and the class did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and neither did a lead attorney for the states.
Clearview was accused of scraping billions of facial images from the web and selling information without consent, in violation of an Illinois privacy law that protects biometric data such as faces and fingerprints. It has denied any wrongdoing.
The states said the settlement gives class members “an unknown financial stake in the very company that harmed them.” The states also criticized the class lawyers’ request for a 39% cut of the settlement in legal fees, which could amount to tens of millions of dollars. The states called the percentage “exorbitant.”
Clearview and the class attorneys told Coleman that the states lodged their arguments too late and she should not consider them.
The states countered that they are not class members and so did not need to file their objection within the timeline set by the court.
The judge said she would hold a hearing on Monday.
In 2022, Clearview reached a separate accord with the American Civil Liberties Union in which the company said it would stop granting paid or free access to its database of facial images to most private businesses and individuals, and would stop providing its database to government agencies in Illinois for five years.
The case is Clearview AI, Inc., Consumer Privacy Litigation, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Case no. 1:21-cv-00135
For the plaintiffs: Jon Loevy, Michael Kanovitz and Thomas Hanson of Loevy & Loevy
For Clearview: James Thompson and Daniel Lynch of Lynch Thompson
Read more:
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U.S. judge warns law firms in Clearview AI lawsuit over 'disarray'
