Court case 1 S 1739/20 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2020)

Due to the Corona pandemic, the Land Baden-Württemberg issued a regulation with measures to contain the Corona virus as well as a special regulation for restaurants and alike. According to these regulations, one has among others, the obligation to leave contact details when visiting a restaurant. A data subject complaint about the obligation of these regulations to provide contact details when visiting a restaurant, stasting that the purpose to process special categories of data according to Article 9 (1) GDPR is not proportional and necessary, as there are less restrictive measures like shorter opening hours and restrictions on how many people can be in a restaurant at the same time and the voluntarily provision of data for contract tracing. Moreover, it has been claimed that there is not enough protection for the personal data as personnel is not trained and changes a lot. Additionally, the data retention period of four weeks is too long. The obligation to provide contact details when visiting restaurants, as regulated in § 2 (3) CoronaVO Gaststätten, is likely to be constitutional and compatible with the provisions of the basic data protection regulation.