A & B v. Ediciones El Pais
Case Law- Country
- Country Location
Latitude: 40.17158238163279
Longitude: -3.6606463193890733
- Country Location (linked Case Law)
- Spain
- Decision Date
- Jun 4, 2018
- Case Status
- Closed
- Case Outcome (Procedural)
- Affirmed in Part/Reversed in Part
- Case Outcome (Disposition)
- Administrative or Provisional Measures Protecting FoE
- Law or Action Overturned or Deemed Unconstitutional
- Law or Action Upheld
- Order to Publish Update, Correction, or Reply
- Keywords
- Data Protection and Retention
- Defamation
- Search Engines
- Case Number
- 2096-2016
- Case Summary
The First Chamber of the Spanish Constitutional Court held that preventing the indexing of the individuals' personal data from the internal search engine on a newspaper's digital archive was necessary for the protection of their rights but that this did not extend to an obligation to anonymize the names from the original articles themselves. In 2011, a number of Spanish citizens who had been convicted of drug offences in the 1980s brought an action against Spanish newspaper El Pais to challenge the re-publishing of articles from the 1980s about their convictions on the newspaper's online portal. The Court held that limiting access to the article through searches against the name and surnames of the individuals was sufficient for the protection of their rights, making the alteration of the actual content both unnecessary and a disproportionate form of interference with freedom of expression.
- Case Significance
The decision does not establish a binding or persuasive precedent within its jurisdiction.
- Related Caselaw (self)
- Source URL
- Columbia Global Freedom of Expression