Court case 14 K 870/22 – Court Ruling (Germany, 2024)

The data subject is a civil servant that works at a municipality (the controller). In 2017, the data subject had a stroke that led to a longer sick leave of the data subject. Following a medical examination by the public medical officer, the controller decided to attempt to transfer the data subject to early retirement in September 2018. This attempt ultimately failed, as the data subject successfully challenged the early retirement before the Administrative Court Stuttgart (Verwaltungsgericht Stuttgart – VG Stuttgart) in November 2021 therefore remaining a civil servant. However, on 5 July 2018 the controller had already sent out a job offer to about 80 staff members. It included the information that the previous staff member (the data subject) was about to be transferred to early retirement due to his incapacity to work. On 16 February 2022, the data subject sued the controller for €20,000 in damages before the VG Stuttgart due to the disclosure of his health information and claiming that the transfer of the his file to the municipality’s lawyer was also illegal. The court found that the lawsuit was admissible and belonged before the administrative court, even though [https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_34.html Article 34 Basic Law (Grundgesetz – GG)] assigns all claims of official liability to the civil courts. The VG Stuttgart argued that Article 82 GDPR was not an official liability claim. The court awarded the data subject €2,500 in non-material damages. The court held that there was a violation of Article 9(1) GDPR due to the disclosure of the alleged disability for service in the job offer the controller had sent out. This was health data under Article 4(15) GDPR, because the inability to work was due to the health status. The wording “previous office-bearer” made the data subject identifiable. The disclosure was neither necessary under Article 9(2)(b) nor (f) GDPR. The court also found that the data subject had suffered a non-material damage. The da