Facebook subscribers sued the company, claiming that they never gave permission for their faces to be used as biometric identifiers.
Last week, U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco dismissed a motion to drop the case.
Facebook had claimed that an Illinois state statute in question did not apply to the social network because its headquarters are in Menlo Park.
The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act stops companies from storing such information — such as facial features — without people’s approval.
A Facebook spokeswoman said that the company couldn’t comment directly on the case.
She said that while she couldn’t share exactly how the social network’s facial recognition technology works, it does measure the distance between, say, a person’s eyes, nose and ears to help it recognize users’ faces.
The spokeswoman also emphasized that the company doesn’t sell its users’ data, “regardless of what that data is.”
Pam Dixon, the executive director of the World Privacy Forum in San Diego, said she still sees problems with Facebook policies.
“People who consent to tagging, it would be very difficult for them to understand that when you allow someone to auto-tag you, you are really engaging in a lot of facial biometrics,” she said.
“I don’t think even to this day that Facebook makes that clear enough.”
A hearing in the case is set for June 15.
©2016 the San Francisco Chronicle. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
