When New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani threw his support behind a ban on biometric scanning last month on privacy grounds, he helped pull a majority of the city council into supporting the bill. That’s alarming some business interests. The bill’s approach is so broad that facilities using the technology for security and workplace management could face lawsuits even if they’re adhering to privacy protections the city has put in place specifically for the technology, a security advocate says. “There are very robust laws in place regulating electronic access systems,” Jake Parker, senior director of government relations at the Security Industry Association, told Facilities Dive in an interview. The city enacted two laws in 2021 targeting biometric scanning. The Biometric Identifier Information Law provides privacy protections to organizations' use of facial, iris, fingerprint and other types of scanning, and the Tenant Data Privacy Act governs landlords’ use of scanning in residential properties. Lawmakers say the latest bill is needed to stop sports and entertainment facilities and other public-facing businesses, like arenas, stores, restaurants and bars, from using facial recognition to monitor who’s on their premises. “No one should have to surrender their personal privacy in order to watch their favorite sports team,” Samuel Levine, the city’s commissioner of consumer and worker protection, said at a press conference last month outside of Madison Square Garden when he announced Mamdani’s support. The problem with the bill is its breadth, Parker said. The bill applies the ban to places of public entertainment, retail stores, and food and drink establishments, and also to places of public accommodation, which in existing city law is a broad category that, Parker says, could ensnare many types of facilities. “It could include, for example, back-end access to a building where there’s a storefront,” he said. “A workplace that