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.
To be fair, though, the original headline ("Do companies have 'personal privacy' rights?") does not convey the new information accurately - some editorializing seems sensible, in this particular case.
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.
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.
My favorite line of questioning was the Breyer/Scalia comment:
JUSTICE BREYER: Well, one reason might be
that this has really never been a problem because all
the legitimate -- or most of them, anyway -- that these
organizations that have interests in privacy are
actually taken care of by the other 17 exemptions here.
JUSTICE SCALIA: Another reason might be
that personal -- nobody ever thought that
personal privacy would cover this.
I think that combined with the burdens analysis from Scalia is much more damning:
JUSTICE SCALIA: Is it the burden of the
government to show that they intended to exclude
corporations, or is it your burden to show that this
exception was meant to include corporations? I would
think the latter is where the burden lies in this case.
MR. KLINEBERG: Well, Justice Scalia, our -
our burden is to -- is to defend our view of the
statute.
JUSTICE SCALIA: Well, but if you're asking
the government to show that the -- there was an intent
to exclude corporations, I don't think that's their
burden. I think it's your burden to show that this
exemption was intended to include corporations.
MR. KLINEBERG: I agree, Your Honor, that we
are -- our burden is to demonstrate to you why the words
"personal privacy" in the statute apply to corporations.
If the Government had to demonstrate that Congress intended to exempt corporations, none of Robert's questions matter. It might weaken AT&T's case, but it wouldn't destroy it. That the Court & AT&T agree that AT&T needs to demonstrate that Congress intended to exempt the privacy of corporations and that 35 years of FOIA requests don't have a single example of such a decision is what really damages AT&T's position.
And Mr. Yang closed well:
Now, AT&T has given up on the grammatical
imperative that guided exclusively the court of appeals
decision in this case, there's nothing left. AT&T can
provide no example where the term personal privacy has
ever been used to refer to a corporation, much less a
foreign government or state or local government in any
context, whether it be FOIA, the law generally, or even
in common usage.
Also, for what it's worth, one other 'fun line' came at the expense of Mr. Yang. Justice Scalia:
Well, I'm not going to help
the government's position if the government doesn't want
to be helped. I'm happy to leave you where you put
yourself.
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.
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.
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.
"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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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 41.7 ms ] threadIndeed, 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.
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.
And Mr. Yang closed well:
Also, for what it's worth, one other 'fun line' came at the expense of Mr. Yang. Justice Scalia:Like you said, highly unusual.
<obvious sarcasm tag>