Apple is set to face a class-action privacy lawsuit that could cost it nearly $32.5 billion. As 9to5Mac reports, the lawsuit was brought in 2020 by a group of 10 Apple users in Illinois, who claimed Apple violated the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) when it collected users’ biometric data without their consent to organize the People album in the Photos app. The People album has been part of the Photos app since 2016. It uses on-device machine learning to recognize people in your photo library and organize photos into separate albums. Though some might find that helpful, facial-recognition features have faced intense scrutiny. In Illinois, BIPA requires companies to notify users and get their written consent before collecting their biometric information. For violating the law through Facebook’s photo-tagging feature, Meta paid nearly $650 million to users in the state in 2022 and a record $1.4 billion to users in Texas in 2024 for a similar violation. As The Times reports, Apple tried to get the Illinois class-action thrown out multiple times. In June, a district judge allowed the class action to move forward, but Apple appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Last week, the court denied Apple’s appeal, meaning the lawsuit can go back to the district court for further proceedings. According to the report, the class includes 6.5 million customers in Illinois who had photos in the People album between Sept. 13, 2016, and the present. Each of them could seek up to $5,000 in damages, for a total of $32.5 billion for Apple if it's found liable. About Our Expert Jibin is a tech news writer based out of Ahmedabad, India. Previously, he served as the editor of iGeeksBlog and is a self-proclaimed tech enthusiast who loves breaking down complex information