diff --git a/src/pygenesis/http_helper.py b/src/pygenesis/http_helper.py
index fb17bba..1aa84e6 100644
--- a/src/pygenesis/http_helper.py
+++ b/src/pygenesis/http_helper.py
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 """Wrapper module for the data endpoint."""
+import json
 import warnings
 
 import requests
@@ -70,6 +71,7 @@ def _check_invalid_destatis_status_code(response: requests.Response) -> None:
     # catch possible errors raised by .json() (and only .json())
     except (
         UnicodeDecodeError,
+        json.decoder.JSONDecodeError,
         requests.exceptions.JSONDecodeError,
     ):
         response_dict = None
diff --git a/tests/unit_tests/test_http_helper.py b/tests/unit_tests/test_http_helper.py
index 9607574..cc2e0fa 100644
--- a/tests/unit_tests/test_http_helper.py
+++ b/tests/unit_tests/test_http_helper.py
@@ -75,7 +75,6 @@ def _generic_request_status(
 
     # TODO: Why is specific (UTF-8) encoding necessary?
     if status_response:
-
         request_status._content = json.dumps(status_dict).encode("utf-8")
     else:
         request_status._content = response_text.encode("utf-8")