Court case III OSK 25287/21 – Court Ruling (Poland, 2022)

On 25 January 2018, the plaintiff filed a request with the Parliament (the defendant) to access the list of candidates for the National Council of the Judiciary. The documents requested contained a list of citizens supporting a given application and/or lists of judges supporting a given application. By decision of 27 February 2018, the defendant refused to comply with the request. The plaintiff appealed this decision to the Court of First Instance. The Court of First Instance ordered the defendant to comply with the request to access document, but only after having anonymised the judges' personal identification number (PIN). The Court held that the PIN was not related to the public function performed by the judges, and therefore should not be made available. During the Court of First Instance proceedings, the Polish DPA initiated ex officio proceedings concerning the same matter and ordered the defendant (the controller) to restrict any further processing of personal data, including refraining from making them publicy available in any form. After not having received any information several months after the decision of the Court of First Instance, the plaintiff started proceedings regarding inaction by the defendant. As a result, the Court of Second Instance ordered the defendant again to comply with the request. The defendant filed a cassation appeal before the Supreme Administrative Court. The main argument of the defendant was the DPA decision, which contrary to the Court of First Instance order, prohibited the defendant from disclosing the information. In the cassation appeal, the Court considered whether the information ought to be disclosed and whether a DPA decision to not comply with a public information access request could overturn a court judgement on the same matter. The Supreme Administrative Court ruled that the Court of First Instance exercised the constitutional right to control the activity of public administration and ruled legally that the