Tuesday, October 05, 2010

AT&T Says It's a Person: Supreme Court Deciding

AT&T says it's a person and is fighting to be excluded from providing information through the Freedom of Information Act. Its claim of personhood is a precedent set by the Supreme Court campaign financing ruling, opposed by Obama, that says corporations are people.
The Supreme Court added the case AT&T v. FCC to its docket on Tuesday, ushering in an argument over, basically, whether AT&T has the legal status of a person on certain issues.

A controversial decision last year loosened campaign finance restrictions on the grounds that corporations are just groups of people, so they should not face certain election rules that individuals do not face. Lyle Denniston at Scotusblog says this case is similar but involves "personal privacy" rather than campaign finance.

The case arose when the company did not want corporate information in the hands of government agencies to become publicly available through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Individuals are protected from that possibility when the documents involve their personal privacy, according to Denniston. The Hill
Welch also advocates for corporations as people.