WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will determine whether a corporation can assert privacy rights to keep the government from releasing information about it and will revisit the tangled legal history of Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith. Both cases are part of a batch of new work the justices accepted Tuesday.
The court’s 2010-11 term begins Monday. The court has already set its calendar for 2010, and it accepted 14 more cases Tuesday to be heard next year.
One is Federal Communications Commission vs. AT&T, which raises the question of what information the public may access about a company under investigation.
At issue is an exception to the Freedom of Information Act that restricts the release of documents that would violate a personal privacy interest. AT&T cited the exception to keep the FCC from releasing information gathered in an investigation of the company’s participation in the federal E-Rate program, which helps provide Internet access to schools.
The court will also undertake its second review of the aftermath of the short marriage of Smith and billionaire J. Howard Marshall, who married when she was 26 and he was 89. Smith challenged Marshall’s will after he died in 1995, because it left nearly all of his $1.6 billion fortune to a son.
The court will also take up a decades-long battle between the Pentagon and contractors Boeing and General Dynamics on the never-built A-12 Avenger attack plane. The government canceled the contract in 1991 and is seeking $3 billion in repayment and interest.
