Austrian Data Protection Authority – Court Ruling (Austria, 2026)

The controller, an assistant professor at a private university (the appellant), was engaged in an employment dispute with her university employer before a labour and social court. The data subject, a senior legal counsel employed by the university gave testimony as a witness in that employment proceeding. On 23 January 2025, the labour and social court ruled in the controller's favour, finding that her employment relationship continued beyond the university's purported termination date. The judgment referred to the data subject several times by her academic title and surname in connection with her witness testimony. In April 2025, the controller published the unredacted judgment in full, including the data subject's title and surname on social media. She shared a downloadable link (first via Dropbox, later via Adobe) on her public Facebook profile and in a closed Facebook group of around 230 members connected to the university community. The files were later removed by Dropbox and Adobe after the data subject reported them. The data subject's full first name and additional details could also be found by combining her academic title and surname with the university's name in a Google search, which surfaced her LinkedIn profile. The data subject filed a complaint with the Austrian DPA, arguing that the controller had no justification for naming her and had drawn her into a public dispute with her employer. The controller argued that the judgment concerned matters of wider relevance to university staff, that the Facebook group was closed and that the data subject's name and role were already public via the university directory and LinkedIn. On 15 October 2025, the DPA upheld the complaint, finding that the controller had violated the data subject's right to secrecy under §1(1) of the Austrian Data Protection Act (DSG) by publishing the judgment without a legal basis. The DPA found that a legitimate interest existed in principle, but that both publications were excessive as the judgment was made accessible to an uninvolved and disproportionately wide audience and that disclosing the data subject's name was not necessary to achieve the controller's stated purpose of informing colleagues in similar situations. The DPA noted that publishing the judgment with the data subject's name redacted would have been an equally effective, less intrusive alternative. The controller appealed, arguing that the data subject had no protectable secrecy interest because she had participated in the proceeding in a public professional capacity and had made comparable information about herself public on LinkedIn and that the DPA had failed to weigh her freedom of expression rights under Article 10 ECHR against the data subject's secrecy interest. The court dismissed the appeal in full and confirmed the DPA's decision. First, the court rejected the controller's argument that no protectable secrecy interest existed because the data subject had acted in a professional capacity. It held that, under settled national case-law, appearing in a professional role does not by itself remove a person's right to secrecy under §1(1) DSG. Second, applying the three-part test for legitimate interest under Article 6(1)(f) GDPR, the court accepted that the controller had, in principle, a legitimate interest in informing colleagues in comparable employment situations about the judgment. However, it held that publishing the data subject's surname failed the necessity requirement under this test and therefore also breached the data minimisation principle under Article 5(1)(c) GDPR. The court noted that the data subject was a witness testifying about legal matters, not the person responsible for the controller's employment contract and that naming her added nothing to the comprehensibility or persuasive value of the information the controller sought to share. Because necessity was lacking, the court found it unnecessary to conduct any further balancing of the parties' respective rights. Third, the court rejected the controller’s argument that her freedom of expression justified the full disclosure of the judgment, for which she relied on the CJEU’s judgment in Case [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:62017CJ0345 C-345/17] (Buivids). The court held that Buivids concerned whether processing could be regarded as being carried out solely for journalistic purposes, whereas there was no indication of journalistic activity in the present case. It further held that §9 DSG, which implements Article 85 GDPR in relation to journalistic activity, was therefore inapplicable. In any event, the court stated that §9 DSG does not entirely override the principle of proportionality but establishes a different standard for balancing the competing interests. Finally, the court agreed with the DPA that redacting the data subject's name and title would have been an equally effective and only minimally burdensome alternative that would not have undermined the controller's informational purpose and held that the controller had not plausibly explained why such redaction would have been insufficient. The court accordingly found no unlawfulness in the DPA's decision and dismissed the appeal. It declared that an appeal on points of law (Revision) was not admissible, since the case did not raise a legal question of fundamental importance and was consistent with existing case-law.