Join a Discussion on Issues Before the Supreme Court
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
ASHINGTON, Jan. 12 -- The Supreme Court today upheld a federal
law that bars states from selling
their databases of personal information on licensed drivers and automobile owners.
States had challenged the law in
courts around the country, and the
unanimous decision was a rare federal victory in the ongoing battle at
the court over federal versus state
authority. Recent decisions, including one yesterday that states are
immune from suits under the federal
law against age discrimination, have
curbed Congressional authority and
upheld state prerogatives in a variety of contexts.
States were earning millions of
dollars a year by selling drivers'
personal information to direct marketers, charities, political campaigns
and various commercial interests
until Congress intervened in 1994 by
passing the Drivers Privacy Protection Act.
Sometimes the information also
fell into the hands of stalkers or, in
the case of abortion clinics, of people
who wanted to track down the identity of doctors and patients. The murder of an actress, Rebecca Schaeffer,
by a man who obtained her unlisted
address from California motor vehicle records helped spur passage of
the law, which generally requires
states to safeguard the privacy of
personal information contained in
the records of drivers who have not
consented to disclosure. There are
exceptions in the law for records
needed for law enforcement, safety
and certain other purposes.
While there were substantial privacy interests at stake in the fate of
the statute, which a federal appeals
court had declared unconstitutional
in a suit brought by South Carolina,
the court today did not address either the policy behind the law or the
privacy issue in general.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's unusually brief nine-page
opinion was framed entirely in terms
of federalism: whether Congress
had the constitutional authority to
pass the law, and whether the law
infringed on state prerogatives.
As to Congressional authority, the
chief justice said the law fit comfortably within the power of Congress to
regulate interstate commerce because the information was "an article of commerce" in the context of
the statute and "its sale or release
into the interstate stream of business
is sufficient to support Congressional
regulation."
As to state prerogatives, Chief Justice Rehnquist said the concerns that
had led the court recently to invalidate a provision of the Brady gun
control law and of a nuclear waste
disposal law were simply inapplicable. He said that unlike those statutes, which required state officials to
assist in federal law enforcement,
and state legislatures to deal with
radioactive waste in particular
ways, the Drivers Privacy Protection Act was a straightforward federal regulation of state activity that
raised no federalism issues.
In effect, the court said the United
States Court of Appeals for the
Fourth Circuit had made a category
error in treating the driver privacy
law as one that raised states' rights
concerns.
The law "does not require the
states in their sovereign capacity to
regulate their own citizens," the
chief justice said, adding, "It does
not require the South Carolina legislature to enact any laws or regulations, and it does not require state
officials to assist in the enforcement
of federal statutes regulating private
individuals."
Chief Justice Rehnquist said the
law simply "regulates the states as
the owners of databases," a permissible federal role.
When the case was argued in November, several justices expressed
their concern to Attorney General
Charlie Condon of South Carolina
that under the state's theory, states
could not be required to adhere to
federal food and drug laws or other
garden-variety federal regulations.
Even in its tilt toward the states in its
recent series of federalism decisions,
the court has not gone that far.
The court's view of the case, Reno
v. Condon, No. 98-1464, permitted it to
avoid confronting the most provocative aspect of the Fourth Circuit's
1998 ruling, that the federal government could regulate the states only
by means of "generally applicable"
laws. Because only states issue drivers' licenses, the law impermissibly
singled out the states for regulation,
the appeals court ruled.
Chief Justice Rehnquist said that
because the law also regulated use of
the information by "private resellers
or redisclosers," it was in fact a
generally applicable law, and there
was no reason to rule on the validity
of the appeals court's approach. To
this degree, the decision today did
not so much resolve an important
federalism issue as defer the debate.
States were not the only ones to
object to the Drivers Privacy Protection Act. A brief filed on South Carolina's behalf by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and
the American Society of Newspaper
Editors told the court that the law
ignored the broad public interest in
access to information that is a "basic
tool for reporting." For example, the
brief said, The Miami Herald used
drivers' records in 1991 to disclose
that 70,000 people in South Florida
had been caught driving with suspended licenses.
On the other side, the Feminist
Majority Foundation, which filed a
brief in support of the law on behalf
of abortion clinics and victims of
domestic violence, said the decision
was an important victory. Eleanor
Smeal, the group's president, said
the decision "will save the lives of
both abortion providers and women
targeted by stalkers."
