Austria: Are we all about to become anonymous? Does addressing someone as “Mr” or “Ms” violate data protection rights?

EU takes the lead

While Anglo-American countries are partially experiencing a political and judicial shift away from diversity and LGBTQ+ rights, rulings by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the District Court of Favoriten (!) are significantly more progressive. In the United Kingdom, the Supreme Court recently caused a stir on 16 April 2025 with its ruling in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers. The court ruled that the term “woman” in the Equality Act 2010 refers purely to biological sex and not also to a person’s acquired sex under the Gender Recognition Act 2004. No data protection concerns were expressed.

A very different approach was taken in a ruling by the District Court of Favoriten (case no. 39 C 273/25d):

As is common practice in many industries, the insurer in question addressed its customers as “Mr” or “Ms” in its correspondence.

The claimant, a policyholder, had repeatedly requested a gender-neutral form of address. When the insurer failed to accommodate this request, the claimant took legal action – citing the recent CJEU ruling (C-394/23). She argued that the continuous use of an incorrect form of address, one not in line with her gender identity, significantly harmed her mental health and quality of life.

In the mentioned decision, the ECJ held that the salutation “Mr” or “Ms” is generally not necessary for the fulfilment of the contract and that recording such data is therefore not compliant with the GDPR. The ECJ case concerned a company selling public transport tickets. The ECJ held that processing personal data related to customer salutations was neither objectively essential nor crucial to the proper performance of the contract.

Taking this ECJ ruling into account, the District Court of Favoriten ordered the insurance company “to refrain from further use of a gender-related form of address or any wording or content of similar meaning addressed to this claimant in all electronic communication network worldwide”.

What does this mean in practice?

As national courts are interpreting the CJEU’s ruling to mean that addressing someone as “Mr” or “Ms” is (in most cases) not necessary to fulfil a contract, we may soon find ourselves not only no longer being addressed personally, but also facing the broader question of whether it is still permissible to ask for a salutation in application forms at all – at least where it is ultimately irrelevant to the performance of the contract.

authors: Manuela Zimmermann, Sara Khalil