A Cook County judge has just put Apple’s voice assistant under a legal spotlight, clearing the way for a sweeping class-action lawsuit that claims Siri has been quietly creating and storing users’ voiceprints without the informed consent required under Illinois law. The ruling could rope roughly 3 million Illinois Siri users into a single case and ramps up the pressure on how tech giants handle biometric data.
Cook County Circuit Court Judge Michael T. Mullen granted class certification in Zaluda v. Apple, finding that plaintiffs have shown Siri’s software computes feature vectors from raw audio in a uniform way that may qualify as biometric “voiceprints” under Illinois law, according to the court order. The judge’s order defines a class of Illinois residents who used Siri and had those feature vectors created and stored by Apple starting in 2014, and filings and reporting estimate the class could reach into the low millions. Plaintiffs’ experts put the range at roughly 2.6 million to 3.9 million Illinois Siri users, as reported by Legal Newsline.
What the judge said
Mullen concluded that common legal questions, including whether Siri’s feature vectors are protected “voiceprints” under Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), outweigh individualized issues because Apple allegedly uses the same system to compute those vectors across devices. In plain English, if Siri processes everyone’s voice data the same way, that question can be answered for the whole group at once.
Plaintiffs’ counsel were quick to cheer the ruling. In a statement, Silver Golub & Teitell called it “a very strong opinion” and suggested it could influence how other BIPA suits are handled.
How big the stakes are
Illinois’ BIPA has real teeth. Under state law, a winning plaintiff can recover $1,000 for each negligent violation or $5,000 for each intentional or reckless violation, plus attorneys’ fees and costs, per section 20 of 740 ILCS 14/20. See the text of that section on Justia for the statute’s damages provision.
The twist that has lawyers and coverage buzzing is how to do the math. If a “violation” is counted every time Siri scans a voice or is activated, the totals could soar into the billions of dollars. Legal Newsline walks through some of those possible exposure ranges.
Where this fits in the wider Siri litigation
The Cook County BIPA case is separate from a federal lawsuit that Apple agreed to settle for roughly $95 million in early 2025 over claims that Siri accidentally captured private conversations. Apple denied wrongdoing in that settlement. The nationwide settlement and the Illinois class action involve different kinds of remedies and legal theories, as reported by the Associated Press.
What happens next
With class status now in place, the case is headed into deeper discovery and briefing on the core merits. The court has appointed lead counsel for the class, and Silver Golub & Teitell’s release lists the attorneys who will represent Illinois Siri users going forward.
Legal implications
The ruling sets up a closely watched test of whether internal “feature vectors” are the kind of biometric identifiers BIPA was written to protect and whether Apple’s disclosures and consent practices satisfied the law’s requirements, including written consent and clear retention and destruction policies. Judges will also have to decide how to count violations over time, which will shape not only the damages calculations here but also how companies design and deploy biometric tools in the future. For the statute’s remedies and right of action, see the full law on Justia.
Illinois Siri users who want to dig into the details can review the filings and reporting linked above, and local outlet Fox 32 Chicago has also summarized the judge’s ruling and the expected timeline.
