U.S. Supreme Court Rules that Corporations Don’t Get to Have Privacy

As a recruiter, you may help meet the talent demands of one or many client corporations.  It may prove helpful to understand what rights corporations do and do not have under the U.S. legal system.  As the push for government transparency grows, will corporations be required to make public more of their documents?  This week, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed a previous decision to curtail corporations’ liberties.

According to a press release by Attorney Adina Rosenbaum, the U.S. Supreme Court has made its decision in Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T.  The Supreme Court concluded that corporations do not have “personal privacy” rights under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).  The court decision determined that the protection of  “personal privacy” does not apply to corporations.

AT&T argued under the Freedom Of Information Act that companies have the right to withhold records from the public that could “embarrass” themselves.  The opposition argued that the public would be deprived of important information about corporate wrongdoing and the government’s response to it.

The case stems from a FOIA request for records relating to an investigation by the FCC into alleged overbilling of the government by telecommunications provider AT&T.

AT&T had argued that all of the records relating to the investigation should be exempt from disclosure under a FOIA exemption that applies to law enforcement records whose release would constitute an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”  Although the exemption had always been understood to apply only to individuals’ privacy, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit had sided with AT&T in a decision last year.

Today, the Supreme Court reversed. Writing for a unanimous court, Chief Justice John Roberts stated that personal privacy “suggests a type of privacy evocative of human concerns – not the sort usually associated with an entity like, say, AT&T.”