January 13, 2000

Justices Uphold Ban on States' Sales of Drivers' License Information

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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."