Copyright 1999 The Baltimore Sun Company
THE
BALTIMORE SUN
November 11, 1999, Thursday ,FINAL
SECTION: TELEGRAPH ,16A
LENGTH: 735 words
HEADLINE:
U.S. calls on high court to revive 1994 act protecting driver privacy;
Conservative justices fear law infringed on states' rights
BYLINE: Lyle Denniston
SOURCE:
SUN NATIONAL STAFF
BODY:
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme
Court's conservative majority seemed troubled yesterday that Congress might have
gone too far to stop states from disclosing drivers' personal information. But
the justices had difficulty finding a solid reason to strike down a 1994 driver
privacy law.
At a hearing that reinforced the impression that the
majority wants to continue its trend toward insulating states from congressional
authority, the justices considered the constitutional fate of the Driver's
Privacy Protection Act.
Congress passed that law after being informed
that personal information about drivers -- names, addresses, telephone numbers,
Society Security numbers, medical information -- was being sold widely by states
from their driver's license and auto registration files. Such information is
widely used in marketing and in compiling databases for political campaigns.
Congress was also concerned that the information was being used by criminal
stalkers or by abortion opponents to track down clinic doctors.
The law
was struck down by a federal appeals court last year, and the Clinton
administration sought yesterday to persuade the justices to revive it.
But U.S. Solicitor General Seth P. Waxman encountered trouble with the
conservative justices who in recent years have issued decision after decision
reinforcing states' rights, usually at Congress' expense, by striking down
federal laws that intrude on state powers.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy,
one of the leaders in those efforts, told Waxman, "For 150 years, the assumption
has been that Congress can't regulate the states; it can regulate people." The
driver protection law, Kennedy said, "blurs the line" between what Congress can
do with its authority and what the states can do with theirs.
Kennedy
and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor expressed concern that the 1994 law marked the
first time that Congress had passed a law intended solely to regulate what
states may do in carrying out a government function.
When Waxman argued
that protecting drivers' privacy was as much within Congress' powers as
regulating air and water pollution, Justice Antonin Scalia disagreed, saying
"any person could pollute," but only states can collect and retain motor vehicle
records -- the sole target of the 1994 law.
Waxman said Congress had
passed the law to try to balance the economic importance of databases containing
information about consumers with the need for "personal
privacy and personal security." The court, Waxman argued, should
respect that balance and uphold the law, especially because the release of
personal information poses "a unique risk to
privacy."
Even as the majority expressed doubts about
the validity of the law, the conservative justices reacted skeptically to
attempts by the state of South Carolina, the challenger to the law in this case,
to offer a persuasive reason to nullify it.
Several justices flatly
rejected the argument by state Attorney General Charles Condon that the 1994 law
" commandeered" state motor vehicle workers into enforcing the law on behalf of
the federal government. In the past, the court had found it unconstitutional for
Congress to press state employees into such enforcement roles.
Kennedy
and Scalia told Condon that there was no evidence to show that barring the state
from selling or releasing drivers' personal information would require any effort
by state employees.
The more liberal justices, who have been resisting
the states' rights trend, sought to raise the stakes in the fight over the
driver privacy law, saying a decision to strike down the law would also mean
that the court would have to cast aside many other federal laws that also impose
burdens on the states.
Justices Stephen G. Breyer and David H. Souter
suggested that laws like the one that controls overtime pay and minimum wages
would be at risk, as would a string of Supreme Court rulings that have limited
states' taxing power.
Even O'Connor suggested that, in deciding the fate
of the driver privacy law, the court might have to re-examine Congress' power to
impose duties on state governments -- such as the obligation to obey the federal
wage and hour law.
The court has refused recently to reconsider the wage
law's constitutionality. It denied, for example, challenges to that law raised
by the Baltimore Police Department and the Anne Arundel County fire department.
LOAD-DATE: November 12, 1999
