

AT&T mauled in oral arguments in arguing for "personal privacy" for corporations - grellas
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/19/AR2011011907414.html

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bediger
That only seems fair, since, as law enforcement and the last 20-odd years of
Supreme Courts have reminded us, no mere human has a right to privacy.

Indeed, the Supremes seem intent on slicing the constitutional basis for
privacy (4th amendment prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure) so thin
you can see through them.

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abhikshah
I agree that AT&T should not have "personal privacy" rights but the reasoning
described in the article seems very odd to me (IANAL, obviously). To me,
"personal" and "person" seem obviously related. And more importantly, the fact
that the outcome of the case hinges on this grammatical detail seems silly.
But, I suppose until corporate personhood is repealed or overturned, this is
the only way to restrict corporate overreach.

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chc
"Personal" and "person" are obviously related, but as Roberts observed, so are
many other noun-adjective pairs like "edge" and "edgy," and edgy things very
often don't even have edges. You can't infer the precise meaning of one from
an arbitrary definition of the other. It seems very unlikely that Congress had
the law's idiosyncratic definition of "person" in mind rather than the common
definition of "personal privacy."

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absconditus
Can we stop with the reddit-style headlines?

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chc
Strong headlines can come across as flip in a Reddit-y sort of way, but it's
really dependent on the link. I think grellas has a pretty good handle on what
is and isn't fair to say about a legal proceeding, so if he says AT&T got
mauled, I don't feel qualified to complain about the headline.

~~~
grellas
I confess that it is editorializing but this was _really_ bad for AT&T and the
tenor of the argument was quite unusual.

The case involves the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which was passed
decades ago and has mounds of decisions on the books interpreting its
provisions. This is federal statute and the legal rules concerning statutes
center on what the legislative body intended in enacting any given statute.
FOIA has 17 categories by which a party can be protected from disclosure,
including one for "personal privacy." AT&T's _central argument_ \- the
centerpiece upon which the lower appellate court decided the case in AT&T's
favor and upon which AT&T's counsel was riding hard hoping to gain a victory
in the Supreme Court - rested on the idea that Congress, in enacting FOIA,
defined the word "person" to include corporations and, hence, when that same
Congress, elsewhere in that same statute enacted at the same time, specified
that there was a right of "personal" privacy, it must have intended "personal"
to include every one listed in the statute as a "person," i.e., corporations.

Basically, after the justices ripped AT&T's counsel apart, Chief Justice
Roberts said, in effect, OK, if "personal" derives from "person," let me see
if I can think of other cases where an adjective links with its noun
counterpart, then let's see, "craft" and "crafty", "squirrel" and "squirrely",
"pastor" and "pastoral" and so on - of course, making it look absurd that
anyone would argue that some common meaning was intended by Congress simply by
the force of the linguistic connection between "person" and "personal." By all
accounts, this salvo had a devastating effect, leaving AT&T's counsel
stammering about how his client had other arguments upon which to rely beyond
the "grammatical imperative."

On the merits, too, this is the same court that, in _Citizens United,_ had
found that the idea of corporate "personhood" should be recognized such as to
give corporations free speech protections vis-a-vis attempts to limit their
speech through campaign finance reform legislation. However (though this is
not sufficiently appreciated by those who disdain the idea of corporate
personhood), the idea of a corporation as a "legal person" dates back at least
to Blackstone in the 1750s and is deeply rooted in the law
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1099625>). _Legally_ , it was not that
big of a jump to say that the idea extended to protecting the speech of
corporations under the First Amendment (of course, the case could have easily
gone another way as well but this court had no problem with such a result).
The FOIA case, though, is entirely different. Here, Congress enacted a statute
with specific purposes and built in protections for "personal privacy" without
any hint that this might apply in some nebulous way to corporations. When that
statute is examined, it becomes very difficult to justify the idea that
Congress would have intended any such result in using the phrase "personal
privacy" and the court of appeal had reached that result primarily based on
the flawed grammatical argument noted above. That is why the Roberts comments
from the bench were so devastating.

The government's counsel, sensing a good thing, waived the last 10 minutes of
time for rebuttal and was more than content to let the matter rest when his
turn came. When a lawyer voluntarily decides to shut up, you know that
something major has just happened!

All in all, a really bad day for AT&T's lawyers and for its case.

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Natsu
I read about this on the SCOTUS blog and it really stood out for the reasons
you mention. But there was also the part where one of the justices mentioned
that they'd always construed the parts of this statute narrowly and the FCC
counsel actually said that they're prefer not to interpret personal privacy
too narrowly due to their broader interests (i.e. not wanting to gut it for
everyone), only to find out later that the justice was essentially trying to
help him argue against AT&T's arguments.

Like you said, highly unusual.

~~~
boredguy8
The government doesn't want it construed too narrowly for reasons other than
relate to this case--and isn't to defend the people, but rather to defend the
Government's ability to withhold things via FOIA exemptions. The Justice's
"help" in arguing for a narrow interpretation here would hurt the Government
in later cases where they also want to redact information.

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Florin_Andrei
Sure, corporations are people, they have feelings. Of course they need
privacy.

<obvious sarcasm tag>

