Fired for Refusing to Smile for the Camera: Lawsuit Claims Employer Demanded 160 Webcam Photos a Day
Employee surveillance is spreading across the workforce—despite widespread dislike and documented harm. The American Psychological Association has found that workplace monitoring raises workers' stress and damages their reported mental health, while a Canadian study linked surveillance to greater pressure, lower job satisfaction, and feelings of privacy violation.
Those findings apply to traditional tools like keystroke tracking and email monitoring. Now consider the psychological toll of an employer using AI to capture 160 photos of your face every workday.
That scenario is at the center of a new lawsuit in New Jersey. Plaintiff Glennis Von Sander-Timinski, a longtime remote employee of healthcare outsourcing firm Sutherland Healthcare Solutions, had worked from home without incident since 2018, earning positive performance reviews along the way.
Then, in August, the company introduced a new monitoring tool: Sentinel AI. According to the suit, the software would photograph her via webcam roughly every three minutes—totaling about 160 images per day.
Von Sander-Timinski refused, fearing the constant surveillance would elevate her stress and aggravate her lupus. The Lupus Foundation of America notes that stress can trigger lupus flares, which can cause fevers, rashes, and sores. Her doctor even submitted a note urging that the facial AI monitoring be made "intermittent or less frequently, as it is causing worsening of anxiety and flaring her Systemic Lupus Erythematosus."
The employer declined to accommodate her. Instead, she was given an ultimatum: accept the AI monitoring, report to the office daily, or be fired. The in-office option was effectively impossible—she lives in Atlantic County, on the opposite side of New Jersey from the company's Clinton office, a commute the lawsuit estimates would total six hours a day.
On September 8, she was fired—after more than a decade with the company, which had acquired her original employer in 2013.
"Our client's employer failed to engage in the interactive process required under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination and denied a reasonable accommodation that would have allowed Ms. Von Sander-Timinski to continue performing her job duties successfully, as implementation of this monitoring system," her lawyers told The Bergen Record.
Most states impose no restrictions on employer surveillance, though a few—New York, Connecticut, Delaware, and California—have begun drawing boundaries. Earlier this year, Maine went further, banning surveillance inside an employee's home unless it is demonstrably necessary.
New Jersey may soon follow. A bill under consideration would regulate AI-powered electronic monitoring, requiring independent auditor approval and limiting where and when surveillance can operate.
If it passes, workers like Von Sander-Timinski might not face the same choice she did. Until then, in most of the country, employees facing facial AI monitoring have little recourse but to face the camera.