Court case 2 ME 426/20 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2020)

The complainant, as a private individual, took part in a citizens' movement in his city which, among other things, demands an immediate end to all coronavirus-related activities. The complainant was a speaker at the meetings of the citizens' movement. In addition, he made numerous contributions to the citizens' movement's chat group. The chat group itself was critical of the topics of masks, vaccination, 5G radiation, and the detection and threat of the Sars-CoV2 virus. The applicant also took part in a demonstration on 1 August 2020 in Berlin under the slogan 'End of the pandemic - Freedom Day'. In this context, he appeared on the same day as a guest on a talk show broadcast on YouTube, mentioning his employer (the university). As an answer to the above activities of the complainant, the General Students' Committee (AStA) published on its webpage an article criticising the behaivour and opinion of the complainant (an employee of the university) to the coronavirus pandemic. The article points out, among other things, that there is no place at the university for a person who is hostile to science and publicly speaks out against all scientific knowledge about the existing pandemic and denies its threat, and thus, at least indirectly and by association, supports certain nationalistic and rightwing views and political parties, including the denial of the Holocaust. The complainant demanded that the publication of the above statements be removed and not published again. He said he had never claimed to support nationalistic and rightwing views and political parties, including the denial of the Holocaust. The General Students' Committee (AStA) did not act in accordance with the above request, so the applicant filed a complaint with the administrative court. Before considering the complaint, the defendant slightly changed the content of the information provided in the article. The Administrative Court Osnabrück dismissed the complaint and found that there was no unlawful infringement of the applicant's personal rights or of the provisions on personal data protection. The complainant filed an appeal to the Superior Administrative Court Lüneburg. Did the General Students' Committee (AStA) have the right to publicly criticise its employee's actions? Has there been defamation of the complainant or a breach of data protection legislation? The Court found the appeal to be unfounded and pointed out that the General Students' Committee (AStA) is authorised to critically examine in public any views of a university employee which are assessed as conspiracy-theoretical - in this case on the coronavirus pandemic. This was based on § 20 para 1 sentence 4 to 6 NHG. But also Article 9(2)(e) GDPR woud not prevent the General Students' Committee (AStA) from publishing their article, at least insofar as the university employee made public statements with reference to his or her activities at the university itself.