NEW YORK, April 29 (Reuters Legal) - A public school teacher has sued the Texas Comptroller's Office on behalf of 3.5 million current and former state employees after the comptroller posted the employees' private information on its public website.
The class-action lawsuit, filed in Houston federal court on Friday, accused the state agency of inflicting financial and emotional harm on the employees by revealing their Social Security numbers, dates of birth and driver's license numbers online and exposing them to the risk of identity theft.
The comptroller's office failed to make "even the most rudimentary effort to safeguard this trove of personally identifiable information," the lawsuit said. The data was unencrypted, easily copied and publicly accessible online, it said.
"I am deeply sorry for what happened," Comptroller Susan Combs said in an email message. She declined to comment specifically on the litigation.
The named plaintiff, Sherry McClung, learned of the data breach from the comptroller's office, which admitted in a press release on April 11 that the information was placed on a public server because "internal procedures were not followed," the suit said.
Combs issued a public apology for the data breach on Thursday, taking "full responsibility" for the incident. The office has offered one year of free credit monitoring to victims of the data breach and identity restoration services to anyone whose information is misused, the press release said.
In a separate action, the Texas Civil Rights Project and the lawyer for another victim of the breach filed a pre-suit petition in state court on Tuesday seeking to depose Combs.
McClung's lawyers pursued a different route, filing their claims in federal court under the federal Privacy Act of 1974, the U.S. Constitution as well as Texas law, McClung's lawyer, Muhammad Aziz, said.
The suit seeks a penalty of $1,000 for each victim of the breach, plus damages and attorney's fees.
The case is McClung v. Combs et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas (Houston), No. 4:11-cv-1651.
For McClung: Muhammad Aziz, Randall Sorrels and Karl Long of Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Sorrels, Agosto & Friend.
For Combs et al: Not immediately available.
(Reporting by Terry Baynes of Reuters Legal)