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Washington, D.C.: On March 1 the Supreme Court of the United States issued its long awaited ruling in the case of FCC v. AT&T. Overturning the decision of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, the Court ruled in favor of the FCC determining that, as a corporation, AT&T had no right to claim a "personal privacy exemption" to protect documents sought under the Federal Freedom of Information Act. The Court rejected AT&T's argument that because had defined "person" so as to include corporations, it had in turn defined "personal" to include corporations as well. The court found that first and foremost, "in ordinary usage, a noun and its adjective form may have meanings as disparate as any two unrelated words."[1] In addition, the court established that the term "personal" is often used to only refer to the individual and never used to refer to a corporation and is in fact more often used to refer to strictly non-business information. Firmly rejecting AT&T's argument, Chief Justice John Roberts felt the need to insert some judicial humor, stating at the end of the opinion, "We trust that AT&T will not take it personally."[1]
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