The Supreme Court decided (PDF) today that AT&T can't keep embarrassing corporate information that it submits to the government out of public view; “personal privacy” rights do not apply to corporations. “We trust that AT&T will not take it personally” concluded the ruling.

The debate started back in 2004, when AT&T realized that it may have been collecting too much government cash as part of the E-rate program that provides broadband access to schools around the country. The FCC launched an investigation, and AT&T turned over reams of documents, eventually settling the matter by paying the government $500,000 and pledging to fix its oversight problems.

Case closed? Not quite. A trade association, CompTel, which included some AT&T rivals decided that it might be nice to take a look at all of this embarrassing AT&T material. CompTel made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the FCC, asking for copies of everything that AT&T submitted. AT&T objected, and the matter has wound its way through various hearings and court decisions for years, until today's ruling from the Supreme Court.

FOIA requests are intended to shine a spotlight on government activities, to let citizens know what their government is doing in their name. Not every document can be gleaned from a FOIA request, however, and one of the key exemptions concerns records that “could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

AT&T insisted that this personal privacy exemption applied even to corporations—after all, corporations are considered legal “persons” in the US. AT&T won this argument at a federal appeals court, convincing judges there that its submissions to the government should remain private.

But the Supreme Court was having none of it, with every justice except Elena Kagan (she recused herself) agreeing that FOIA was not written simply to prevent corporate embarrassment. After lengthy discussions of grammar, including commentary about the relationship between nouns and adjectives, the court concluded that “personal” in this case referred to individuals and to private life, not to corporate dealings and business decisions.

The ruling should make it easier to access corporate records turned over to government investigators, though it is also likely that corporations will make even greater attempts to avoid turning over such information in the first place.

Free Press, which had opposed AT&T's position, issued a statement today calling the court decision "a huge win for advocates of government transparency... This decision means that corporations cannot hide behind claims of personal privacy in order to protect their business practices from public scrutiny."