Gender irrelevant for taking the train, top EU court rules
Gender irrelevant for taking the train, top EU court rules
French operator SNCF has previously asked passengers to self-declare as 'Monsieur' or 'Madame'.
The EU's top court ruled on Thursday that requiring rail passengers to declare a gender when buying a ticket is in breach of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) ruled against French rail operator SNCF, which has previously required passengers to self-declare as either "Monsieur" or "Madame" when booking train tickets online, deeming it unnecessary information under the GDPR.
The case was brought by the French association Mousse, whose mission is to "campaign for justice for the LGBTQI+ community," according to its website.
Holy crap, what evil company would let this make it to court?
When a queer NGO asks you to please allow folks to book a train without entering a gender, just fucking make that change.
Ignoring them and having to go to court over it is absurd.
Wonder if it was a weird cost thing, like it's ridiculously difficult/costly to change their ticketing infrastructure to cope with this?
Probably not "ridiculously costly" but companies like cheaping out on... well, everything.
Their mistake was not to add the "prefer not to say" option, now they can't collect any gender stats.
I think it wouldn't fly either since verdict was that this is GDPR problem - there was no need to collect this info.
Yeah mostly, "prefer not to say" kinda means it's optional. You're allowed to use optional non-essential stuff like this, you do have to state why and not use it for other things. So they could use "Madame Lastname" to address their emails to you if they say that's what it's for but not reuse that for market research.
I put it like this because that would have avoided the complaint and most likely the court case too.
In America it would have been said that asking passengers to self-declare is necessary to "Keep women safe"
Now do Ryanair too:)
Chere SNCF, je suis eune mondame, comme mon genre est non-binaire! [Liebe SNCF, ich bin eine "mondame" [Geschlechtsneutrale Alternative zu madame/monsieur, entsprechend Herr*in], da mein [soziales] Geschlecht nicht binär ist!]
Englisch: Dear SNCF, I am a "mondame", due to my gender being non-binary!
What does the parenthetical "Herr*in" in your German comment refer to?
Genderneutral version of Sir/lady/lord
Is this like the first step towards having gender-specific train cars? Does France have an issue with harassment on trains like some other countries/cultures? Or are they just being weird about gender?
It was probably just data harvesting later used for marketing optimization.
I thought this was just a cynical take at first, but it prompted me to read the very brief press release attached to the OPs article. Your answer actually seems to be correct. Apologies!
It sounds like this case was actually brought to court as a matter of unnecessary dara collection under GDPR and said if this data has no ligitimate use that it violates data minimalism requirements and should be discontinued. The rail system said they used it to tailor language used to the customer, and the courts decided that generic language could be used adequately without any gendering and to remove the question of gender.
the Court reiterates that, for data processing to be regarded as necessary for the performance of a contract, that processing must be objectively indispensable in order to enable the proper performance of that contract. In that context, the Court finds that personalisation of the commercial communication based on presumed gender identity according to a customer’s title does not appear to be objectively indispensable in order to enable the proper performance of a rail transport contract. The railway undertaking could choose to communicate based on generic, inclusive expressions when addressing a customer, which have no correlation with the presumed gender identity of those customers. That would be a workable and less intrusive solution.
the fundamental freedoms and rights of those customers can prevail over that legitimate [business] interest, in particular where there is a risk of discrimination on grounds of gender identity.
It's barely over a page to read, and as someone not covered under GDPR, is very enlightening to see a court actually defend private personal party data seriously. I recommend giving it a full read to anyone interested in data protection.