Legal News

In AT&T Case, Chief Justice Roberts Has a Little Fun at Company?s Expense

By Peter Landers

Who said Chief Justice John Roberts was a friend of corporations?

In his opinion today in FCC v. AT&T, the chief didn't just rule against AT&T  – he lacerated the company like a sushi master with a lump of tuna, and added a final twist of the knife. Click here for the opinion; click here and here for earlier LB posts on the case.  Click here for Brent Kendall’s writeup at the WSJ.

AT&T's offense was trying to claim that it enjoys the same "personal privacy" exemption under the Freedom of Information Act as living and breathing people. After all, the Supreme Court ruled last year in the Citizens United case that corporations and unions enjoy many of the same free-speech rights as people.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit agreed with the company, saying it didn't have to hand over emails and other potentially embarrassing documents stemming from a federal case involving alleged AT&T overbilling.

At January arguments, it was quickly clear that Chief Justice Roberts had a different view of whether corporations-defined as persons under the law-also enjoy "personal" privacy. He observed that he had easily found other examples "where the adjective was very different from the root noun," including "squirrel" and "squirrely," "pastor" and "pastoral" and "craft" and "crafty."

The chief followed up with more dictionary research for his opinion today, where he writes that "personal privacy" is more than just the sum of the two words. "[T]wo words together may assume a more particular meaning than those words in isolation," he writes. "We understand a golden cup to be a cup made of or resembling gold. A golden boy, on the other hand, is one who is charming, lucky, and talented."

On the often-fractious court, not a single justice dissented or even offered a concurrence. (Justice Elena Kagan sat out the case.)

By the final paragraph, AT&T might have thought the beating couldn't get worse. Alas, after stating unequivocally that the personal privacy exemption "does not extend to corporations," Chief Justice Roberts added: "We trust that AT&T will not take it personally."

Ouch.

In a brief statement, AT&T spokesman Marty Richter said, “We respect the court’s decision.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 01, 2011 (boomark / email).