Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T Inc.
The Court ruled that AT&T, as a corporation, cannot claim "personal privacy" to keep records private under a public-records law exemption meant to protect individuals from unwarranted invasions of privacy.
The decision means companies caught up in government investigations cannot use this particular privacy shield to block the release of records about themselves, even though the same law defines "person" to include corporations elsewhere.
“We trust that AT&T will not take it personally.”
The Court's closing line summarizing that corporations lack "personal privacy" under the exemption.
How it got here: The FCC withheld records about individual employees but not AT&T itself; the Third Circuit ruled the privacy exemption also covered AT&T; the FCC asked the Supreme Court to review that ruling.
The Case in Depth
What happened
AT&T told the FCC it may have overcharged the government for services under a school-and-library technology program. After an FCC investigation and a settlement, a trade group representing AT&T's competitors filed a public-records request for the investigation file. AT&T argued that some records about itself, not just about individual employees, should be withheld as an invasion of "personal privacy."
The question before the Court
When AT&T asked the FCC to keep parts of its investigation file private, could AT&T claim the same "personal privacy" protection a person under public-records law?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that corporations do not have "personal privacy" for purposes of this Freedom of Information Act exemption. Even though the law defines "person" broadly to include corporations elsewhere, the word "personal" is a separate, undefined term that ordinarily refers to individuals and their private lives, not to companies.
Looking at how Congress used the same "personal privacy" phrase in a related exemption limited to individuals, and used different language when it meant to cover corporate information, the Court concluded AT&T could not use this exemption to keep records about itself private, even though records about its individual employees remained protected.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Businesses under federal investigation will have a harder time blocking public disclosure of records that name or describe the company itself, though records about individual employees can still be withheld. Journalists, competitors, and watchdog groups seeking government records about corporate investigations gain a clearer path to obtaining company-related material through public-records requests.
What changes now
The judgment of the Third Circuit is reversed, meaning AT&T cannot invoke this privacy exemption to withhold records about itself. The FCC's file may now be released to the extent it concerns the company, while records about individual employees remain protected under the same exemption. This is a final merits ruling resolving the statutory question; no further proceedings on this issue are expected.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly said this case does not decide the scope of a corporation's "privacy" interests under the Fourth Amendment or double-jeopardy law, or any general constitutional or common-law privacy question — only the meaning of "personal privacy" in this specific public-records exemption.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court explained that when a law doesn't define a word, courts give it its ordinary, everyday meaning rather than assuming it automatically inherits the meaning of a related defined word elsewhere in the statute.
- Although the public-records law defines "person" to include corporations, it does not define "personal," and adjectives don't always carry the same meaning as their related nouns — much like "corny" has little to do with "corn."
- Everyday usage of "personal" ordinarily refers to individuals and their private lives, often used specifically to contrast with business matters (personal expenses versus business expenses), which cuts against reading it to cover corporations.
- The Court read the word "personal" together with the word it modifies, "privacy," reasoning that the phrase "personal privacy" as a whole evokes human, individual concerns rather than a generic legal category tied to the defined term "person."
- Comparing this exemption to two neighboring exemptions in the same law confirmed the reading: one exemption using the same "personal privacy" phrase has long been understood to protect only individuals, while a separate exemption that does cover corporate information uses different wording built on the defined term "person."
- Based on this contextual reading, the Court concluded that the privacy exemption at issue does not extend to corporations, regardless of the law's broader definition of "person."