Court Certifies Class in SGT's Apple Siri Biometric Privacy Case

February 5, 2026

Law360 and the Cook County Record reported on a significant win for Silver Golub & Teitell in Zaluda v. Apple Inc., a class action alleging that Apple illegally collected and used Illinois residents' voiceprints through its Siri voice assistant without obtaining informed consent.

Judge Michael Mullen of Cook County Circuit Court granted class certification in an order on January 29, 2026, finding that resolving the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) claims on a classwide basis "is the most efficient and fair way to proceed" and "is consistent with the policy goals underlying the class action mechanism," Law360 reported.

The certified class includes all Illinois residents who have used Apple's Siri function and had their voiceprints or identifiable biometric features computed from their voice signals or raw audio collected and stored, from September 14, 2014, to the present -- approximately 3 million class members.

Law360 quoted SGT partner David Golub calling Judge Mullen's ruling "a very strong opinion" that "really lays out the authority for class certification in BIPA cases," making it an important decision not just for this litigation but for other BIPA cases as well.

The court rejected Apple's arguments that individual issues were too prevalent for class certification, finding that common legal and factual questions dominate the case, including whether Siri's voice feature vectors constitute voiceprints subject to BIPA's informed-consent requirements.

The case alleges that Apple created voiceprints through a process it refers to as "user enrollment" and used those voiceprints to process Siri requests and improve the Siri product, all without obtaining the informed consent required under Illinois law.

The Cook County Record also reported on the class certification, noting the significant financial implications of the case. When multiplied across millions of potential class members, depending on how the law is interpreted in the case, damages could run from the billions up to the hundreds of billions of dollars in potential damages, were the case to proceed to trial and result in a verdict in favor of plaintiffs, the Cook County Record reported.

Law360: Illinois Apple Users Granted Class Status for Siri BIPA Claims (subscription required)

Cook County Record: Siri Class Action Lawsuit Greenlit, Billions at Stake

If you are a potential class member, please visit our Apple Siri Voiceprint Litigation page.