Law: Corporations Are Not Entirely Persons

The Supreme Court decided today that AT&T can't keep embarrassing corporate information that it submits to the government out of public view; personal privacy rights do not apply to corporations. We trust that AT&T will not take it personally concluded the ruling.

AT&T insisted that this personal privacy exemption applied even to corporations—after all, corporations are considered legal persons in the US. AT&T won this argument at a federal appeals court, convincing judges there that its submissions to the government should remain private.

But the Supreme Court was having none of it, with every justice except Elena Kagan (she recused herself) agreeing that FOIA was not written simply to prevent corporate embarrassment. After lengthy discussions of grammar, including commentary about the relationship between nouns and adjectives, the court concluded that personal in this case referred to individuals and to private life, not to corporate dealings and business decisions.

For more, see Supreme Court: At&T Can't Keep Bad Behavior a Secret by Nate Anderson, March 2, 2011 at ars technica.