La Fortuna v. INAI

Expediente Auxiliar 355/2016
Document type
Court Decision
Country

In Mexico, the data protection authority responsible both for the access to information and data protection (INAI – Instituto Nacional de Transparencia, Acceso a la Informacion y Protección de Datos Personales) ordered Google Mexico to delist 3 URLs when queries were made using the claimant’s name, in one of the first “right to be forgotten” cases of the country. Citing extensively the Google Spain case, the Mexican DPA affirmed that:

  1. Google Mexico was under the jurisdiction of the Mexican DPA;
  2. Google Mexico was a data controller in the terms of Mexican Data Protection Law;
  3. Google Mexico failed to respond to the requests made by the data subject (based on the right to oppose and the right to cancel the processing of data);

The issue was brought to court by the original publisher (magazine La Fortuna), represented by the civil society organization R3D – Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales. In the decision, a federal court recognized that delisting could interfere in the ability of the publisher to disseminate information and that, therefore, this would violate the right to a fair trial, to a hearing, and to due process, enshrined in the articles 14 of Mexican Federal Constitution and 8 of the American Convention on Human Rights.

With this result, the case returned to the DPA to include the original publisher in the administrative procedures, making it a landmark decision about due process in the context of a request to be forgotten.

Country
Topic, claim, or defense
Defamation or Personality Rights
Privacy or Data Protection
Right to Be Forgotten
Freedom of Expression
Document type
Court Decision
Issuing entity
Appellate Domestic Court
Type of service provider
Search Engine or Index
Issues addressed
Procedural Protections for Users and Publishers
OSP obligation considered
Block or Remove
Type of law
Civil
Administrative
General effect on immunity
Strengthens Immunity