Can a geolocation system be used as evidence for a dismissal?

A school driver uses his or her professional vehicle for personal use. Faced with that finding, established in support of the implementation of a system for geolocating the vehicle, the employer notifies that employee of a warning intended to put an end to that misuse and then, in the event of his continuing actions, dismisses him for serious misconduct.

The employee then decides to go to the labor court to challenge his dismissal, which entitles the employee. The employer decides to appeal.

The Court of Appeal upheld the judgment, noting that the business did not justify having personally informed the employee of the implementation of the geolocation system, nor of the purpose of that system and of the data collected. The use of geolocation was not essential for measuring the monitoring of the working time of its staff, since the recording of the working time had to be carried out by means of an individual control booklet filled daily by the employees concerned, as provided for by Decree No 2003-1242 regulating the methods of exercising the profession.

It maintains that the introduction of that geolocation system had enabled the employee to be permanently monitored by collecting data relating to the location of his vehicle outside his working hours and days, and that the infringement thereby caused to his rights to a personal and family life was disproportionate to the aim pursued.

Thus, the data resulting from the use of the geolocation system were inadmissible as a means of proof capable of justifying the dismissal.

The employer brought the case before the Court of Cassation, considering that, although obtained unlawfully, it had no other means of proof to show that the employee was using his professional vehicle outside his working periods.

The Court of Cassation upholds the reasoning of the Court of Appeal. In its view, the unlawful nature of the use of a system for geolocating an employee’s vehicle, both to monitor his periods of work, in view of the existence of another means of verifying it, and to locate it outside his periods of work, on account of the disproportionate interference with the employee’s privacy in view of the aim pursued.

Pursuant to Article L. 1121-1 of the Labor Code, the Cour de Cassation confirms the inadmissibility of this evidence, in support of which the employer had justified the dismissal for serious misconduct of its employee.