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Does New Supreme Court Decision In FOIA Case Stop Citizens United In Its Tracks?

By Anne Weismann

Today the Supreme Court issued a decision in Fed. Communications Comm’n v. AT&T, holding the protection the Freedom of Information Act provides for “personal privacy” does not include corporations. AT&T was trying to prevent the disclosure of documents it had submitted to the FCC as part of an investigation, arguing their release would invade the corporation’s personal privacy. According to AT&T, because the word “person” in the FOIA includes corporations, the reference to “personal privacy” must also include corporations.

When the Supreme Court agreed to hear this case, many feared the Court would use it as an opportunity to extend its ruling in Citizens United, where it recognized the First Amendment rights of corporations, to broader contexts such as the FOIA. A number of groups, including CREW, filed friend-of-the-court briefs urging the Supreme Court to use common sense and congressional intent to limit the FOIA’s personal privacy protection to individuals. We also pointed out that extending the FOIA’s personal privacy protections to corporations would deprive the public of a large swath of records and information related to agency investigatory and enforcement efforts.

Fortunately, the Court disagreed with AT&T. Justice John Roberts, writing for a unanimous court, offered the common-sense explanation that adjectives such as “personal” do not always reflect the same meaning as their corresponding noun, here “person.” As Justice Roberts pointed out, there is a world of difference between “crank” and cranky,” “corn” and corny,” “crab” and “crabbed.” Justice Roberts ended the decision rejecting AT&T’s arguments with the hope “that AT&T will not take it personally.”

Linguistic humor aside, a loss here would have suggested Citizens United was only the first step in an extended judicial effort to broaden and protect corporate rights. That may still be the case – the AT&T decision arises in the narrow context of the FOIA, where virtually no court before FCC v. AT&T had ever recognized that corporations have protectible privacy rights. Thankfully, the Court got this one right and – at least for now – declined to further extend the rights of corporations.  

• Read the SCOTUS decision here.
• Read CREW's Amicus brief here.

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