A German couple is suing Facebook after the company denied them access to their deceased daughter’s account. While legal disputes over inheritance are nothing new, questions over digital legacy and online reputations are growing more common in the age of information.

According to German news outlet Deutsche Welle, a subway train struck and killed the plaintiffs’ 15-year-old daughter in 2012. It remains unclear whether her death was an accident or if the girl committed suicide. Her parents hope that by gaining access to her Facebook account they might be able to shed light on the circumstances surrounding her death.

In 2015, a court in Berlin granted the couple access to their daughter’s Facebook account, stating that digital possessions ought to be as inheritable as material possessions. Facebook, however, refused to comply with the court order and appealed the decision. The social media giant argued that while they sympathized with the parent’s demands, it would violate the privacy of users who had messaged the teenager under the expectation their conversation would remain private.

Facebook does have a set of guidelines that users can follow if they are concerned about what will happen to their account upon their passing. Facebook memorializes accounts of deceased people and gives users the option to name a legacy contact. However, the plaintiffs’ daughter was not old enough to name a legacy contact.

Even if she had been old enough to name her parents as legacy contacts, they still would not have been allowed to log into the memorialized account or check her messages. Deutsche Welle reported that the girl’s parents did know her password but that her account had already been memorialized by the time they tried to log in.

Increasingly, law firms and will writers are offering advice on how to protect one’s digital legacy, but the case in Germany highlights the fact that there are limits on one’s ability to control their online presence once they pass. Individuals have the option to create (or not create) an online profile. However, once an account has been created, control over that account may not be exclusive to the user depending on the service.

Clearly, the phrase “you can’t take it with you” has added meaning in the information age but legal questions about digital legacy have salience in life as well as death. Additionally, one can have a digital legacy without ever having created an online account.

In 2010, a Spanish man filed complaints with the national Data Protection Agency against a local newspaper, Google Spain, and Google Inc. When that man’s name was searched, Google turned up an auction notice for his repossessed house. He argued that because the matter had been resolved, the search result was irrelevant and violated his right to privacy. In 2014, the European Court of Justice ruled in favor of the man’s “right to be forgotten.”

While the European Court ruled that the “right to be forgotten” is limited and should not be used to make “prominent people less prominent or criminals less criminal” other courts have enforced the digital right more broadly. A Japanese court stirred up controversy when it recognized a convicted child sex offender’s “right to be forgotten.” The court ruled that in spite of his crimes, the man should be allowed to rehabilitate his life “unhindered.”

Digital legacies have come to define people in life and in death. As long as the law continues to lag behind technology (it likely always will), questions of who controls online reputations remain points of fierce contention.

Callum Cleary

Callum is an editorial intern at Law Street. He is from Portland OR by way of the United Kingdom. He is a senior at American University double majoring in International Studies and Philosophy with a focus on social justice in Latin America. Contact Callum at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Private employers in European Union member-states can now legally ban employees from wearing head scarves or other religious garb, the bloc’s highest court ruled on Tuesday. The European Court of Justice’s ruling comes at a time of creeping anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment across Europe, most notably in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Head scarves are not the only targeted religious ornaments; the ruling could affect Sikh men who wear turbans or Jews who wear yarmulkes, for instance. Applying only to the workplace, the ban is binding for EU member-states, as all ECJ rulings are. Some European politicians who are bracing for heated elections later this year welcomed the ruling. Francois Fillon, the scandal-plagued presidential candidate in France, called the ruling an “immense relief,” and said it would be “a factor in cohesion and social peace.”

France’s far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, has built her campaign around anti-immigrant, and specifically anti-Muslim, policies. She is expected to advance to the second round of voting, which will take place on May 7. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany party is seeking to supplant Chancellor Angela Merkel in an election in September, though the party has recently dipped in the polls. The party’s Berlin leader, Georg Pazderski, applauded the ECJ’s ruling, saying it “sends out the right signal, especially for Germany.”

The ruling was based on two separate cases brought to the court by France and Belgium. In the first case, Samira Achbita, who worked for a security company in Belgium, was fired when she refused to remove her head scarf while at work. The ECJ ruled that Achbita had not been discriminated against because her workplace’s ban of religious attire applied to all religions, not just Islam.

“An internal rule of an undertaking which prohibits the visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious sign does not constitute direct discrimination,” the court said, adding that the rule “treats all employees to the undertaking in the same way, notably by requiring them, generally and without any differentiation, to dress neutrally.”

In the second case, Asthma Bougnaoui was fired after a customer of her France-based IT consultancy firm complained that her head scarf was “embarrassing.” The ECJ ruled that she had, unlike Achbita, been discriminated against, because a customer complaint does not justify the firing of an employee. But that does not mean an employer cannot have a policy that employees are forbidden to wear religious attire in the workplace. The ECJ ruling allows for such a policy, which many religious and civil rights groups worry could lead to discrimination, specifically against Muslim women.

“It will lead to Muslim women being discriminated in the workplace, but also Jewish men who wear kippas, Sikh men who wear turbans, people who wear crosses,” said Maryam H’madoun of the Open Society Justice Initiative. “It affects all of them, but disproportionately Muslim women.”   

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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