Court case 3 Bs 146/23 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2023)

The data subject as a data subject in this case, was a candidate for the election of the students' parliament at the University of Hamburg. Upon signing up for candidacy the data subject was requested to disclose his date of birth in the candidacy registration form, but he claimed this to be unnecessary and filed his candidacy without providing his date of birth. The University rejected his candidacy on this basis, claiming that all candidacies must also entail the candidates' date of birth. The data subject decided to file suit against the member organisation of the University with the Administrative Court of Hamburg (Verwaltungsgericht Hamburg, VG Hamburg) The controller is the University of Hamburg, a legal entity under public law of the City of Hamburg. The Hamburg University Election Act (Wahlordnung, WahlO) stipulates that to be able to run for elections, every candidate must provide their full name, student number, date of birth, current home address and an email address. In its submissions, the controller argued that processing the date of birth of candidates was necessary for the purpose of identifying them beyond doubt and ensuring that the candidates were of legal age. On 11 February 2023, the VG Hamburg, in the first instance, held that the data subject's candidacy registration form was incomplete because the required date of birth was missing and that this requirement does not raise any data protection concerns. Hence, the court took the view that he had not submitted a complete form in a timely manner and therefore could not run for election. The data subject thus decided to appeal the decision to the Higher Administrative Court of Hamburg (Oberverwaltungsgericht Hamburg, OVG Hamburg). The OVG Hamburg first of all held that the GDPR applies because the date of birth of a data subject constitutes personal data and its use in the context of the election is to be considered data processing. Further, the OVG held that the only legal basis for such da