Four professional athletes who infringed the anti-doping rules challenge, before an Austrian court, the fact that their names, the sporting discipline concerned, the duration of their exclusion from sporting events and the reasons for that exclusion were or were going to be published online, that is to say, on the websites of the Austrian independent anti-doping agency (NADA Austria) and the Austrian Anti-Doping Legal Committee (the ÖADR). 

In Austria, such publication is provided for by law. It aims, first, to deter athletes from committing infringements of the anti-doping rules and thus to prevent doping in sport. Second, it aims to prevent circumvention of the anti-doping rules by informing all persons likely to sponsor or engage the athlete in question that he or she is suspended.

The four athletes concerned submit that that publication contravenes the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).