janelane wrote:
So government contractors don't have a right to privacy but corporations do?

I'm not sure where I sit on that one. On the one hand, the government might require contractors to get security clearances. Once you allow that you've got to allow all kinds of things that are less then that. The requirement in question is totally egregious but I'm not convinced that it rises to a constitutional issue. The lawsuit was a bit of a hail merry because the employer was unwilling to bend on what was simply bad policy. If you don't like their requirements, you have the option of not working there. If might be different if they were a captive audience, but they aren't. They are accepting money.

I could be convinced otherwise. I don't agree with the conservatives that its clear that there is absolutely no constitutional right to informational privacy. The conservative notion that all constitutional rights are explicitly stated is in total conflict with the text of the constitution, the history of the constitution and of the notion of constitutionality in English common law. Its rather bizarre that we have justices that think that and even more bizarre that they claim to base their perspective on history.

But there are a lot of requirements that employers can impose on potential employees and while some requirements are restricted by statute, few are restricted by the Constitution.

Its not as if I'm saying that government contractors have no right to privacy. Information that the government collected about them pursuant to their employment contract should not be made available to anyone who wants to file a FOIA request. Thats a separate issue (and one that seems to have been raised by the justices in reference to the privacy act).

The issue regarding the personhood of corporations is complicated. Corporations are obviously not persons in a semantic sense. I think that rights apply to the actions of corporations. The freedom of the press applies to corporations. Thats enough for me to reject the philosophical notion that corporations cannot have rights. If corporations must be people to have the right to freedom of the press, then clearly they must be people.

RE: FCC v. AT&T reveals the limits of corporate personhood at the Supreme Court. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine