CHICAGO — CPKC is the target of a class action lawsuit under Illinois’ Genetic Information Privacy Act for asking job applicants about their family medical histories, the legal news site Cook County Record reports.
The suit, filed last month in Cook County Circuit Court, says the state law bars employers from seeking genetic information, and that the law’s definition of that term includes an individual’s family medical history. It says the lead plantiff in the case, Robert Meeks, was asked for the medical history information by a third-party medical provider as part of a pre-employment physical when he applied for a job as an engineer at CPKC’s Bensenville, Ill., facility in December 2022. The suit claims the railroad willfully violated the law because “it knew, or reasonably should have known” that Meeks would be asked to provide the medical history information in violation of the state law.
The suit was filed on behalf of any individuals who have applied for a job with the railroad in Illinois in the last five years, and seeks $15,000 for each intentional or reckless violation of the law and $2,500 for each negligent violation, as well as attorney fees.
A similar law, the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, led to a suit against BNSF Railway over its use of fingerprints to allow truck drivers to enter intermodal sites in the Chicago area [see “BNSF ordered to pay $228 million …,” Trains News Wire, Oct. 13, 2022]; that award was later thrown out on appeal, with the railroad later reaching a settlement [see “BNSF settles suit …,” News Wire, Sept. 26, 2023].
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