Stichting De Huismeesters – Court Ruling (Netherlands, 2020)
General GDPR enforcement action
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A Dutch court ruled that a housing corporation's record of evicting a tenant for growing cannabis did not count as criminal data under GDPR. The tenant's eviction reason was shared with other organizations, but the court reduced the tenant's rental ban from five years to two. This decision clarifies how eviction reasons are classified under GDPR.
What happened
The court ruled that recording a tenant's eviction reason for cannabis cultivation did not constitute criminal data under GDPR.
Who was affected
The case involved a tenant who was evicted for growing cannabis and had their eviction reason shared with other housing organizations.
What the authority found
The court decided that the eviction reason did not count as criminal data under GDPR, reducing the tenant's rental ban from five years to two.
Why this matters
This ruling helps clarify how eviction reasons are treated under GDPR, particularly regarding what constitutes criminal data. Housing organizations should review how they classify and share tenant information.
GDPR Articles Cited
The housing department of Groningen has a policy according to which the renting agreement can be terminated where the tenants were found to cultivate cannabis in the place allocated to them. They are then put on a list where they are banned from applying to a new housing during 3 years. The Appellant was evicted from her rental home because of her cannabis plants, a record of which was made by the housing corporation, followed by a 5-year prohibition for the Appellant to rent homes. Her personal data along with the reason for the contract termination (cannabis cultivation) was supposed to be shared with other local organizations and housing corporations according to the agreement against home cultivation of cannabis. On 17 November 2015 the Court of First Instance ruled, among others, in favor of the Appellant’s objection against the sharing of her data according to the agreement and reduced the 5-year prohibition to 2 years. Both Appellant and the Huismeersters Foundation appealed this decision in the Court of Appeals on several points. One tenant was expelled from his house on this basis and considered that the processing of his data was not compliant with the GDPR. The controller put forward Article 6(1)(b), (c) and (f) GDPR as potential legal bases. Main questions from data protection perspective were: • Is the Huismeestes Foundation allowed to share (personal) data of Appellant with other participants of the agreement because Apellant has been evicted from her social rental home due to a hemp farm? • Does a record of the reason of eviction (cannabis) constitute data relating to criminal convictions and offences according to Article 10 GDPR? The Court ruled that the record of the reason of eviction does not constitute data relating to criminal convictions and offences. In this case the record was made by assigning code 2 (2=cannabis) in the field “reason of registration”. According to the Court, this simply marks cannabis being grown in the rental home
Outcome
Court Ruling
A ruling by a national court on a data-protection matter.
Related Cases (0)
No other cases found for Stichting De Huismeesters in NL
This is the only recorded case for this entity in this jurisdiction.
Details
About this data
Cite as: Cookie Fines. Stichting De Huismeesters - Netherlands (2020). Retrieved from cookiefines.eu
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