Court case 1 S 397/19 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2020)

The plaintiff was born in the Republic of Turkey. His birth was first recorded in the civil status register in the district of Kayseri as 01.01.1956 and later corrected to 01.01.1958 (following a ruling of the District Court Sarız in 1971). When moving to Germany in 1971, the plaintiff stated 01.01.1958 as his date of birth. This date was entererd into defendant's register of residents. In 2015, after the discovery of new documents by the plaintiff the District Court of Kayseri ruled that the plaintiff's date of birth in the civil status register in the district of Kayseri would be corrected to 01.01.1953. The plaintiff also received a new Turkish passport showing that date. Subsequently, the plaintiff requested the defendant to change his date of birth to 01.01.1953, which was rejected due to lack of certainty on the plaintiff's actual date of birth. After the plaintiff's objections to this rejection were dismissed by the Karlsruhe Regional Council, the plaintiff filed a complaint with the Administrative Court of Karlsruhe, which ordered the defendant to correct the plaintiff's date of birth recorded in the register of residents from 01.01.1958 to 01.01.1953. The defendant appealed againts that decision. Two disputes werde adressed from a data protection perspective: 1) What is the legal basis for a request for rectification of an entry in the register of residents if the request has been submitted before the GDPR entered into force but has not yet been decided on as valid or legally binding? 2) What are the consequences if the plaintiff requests the rectification of an entry in the register of residents and it is not possible to clarify when the plaintiff was actually born ("non liquet")? Does this entitle the plaintiff to (i) restriction of processing pursuant to or analogous to Article 18 (1)(a) GDPR, (ii) the entry of the date of birth claimed by the plaintiff or (iii) the replacement of his year of birth by the sequence of numbers "0000"? The Court held