Patrick Leahy: “I mentioned that Judge Shedd tends to go even beyond where an activist U.S. Supreme Court has gone. In a 1997 case…”

“I mentioned that Judge Shedd tends to go even beyond where an activist U.S. Supreme Court has gone. In a 1997 case challenging the constitutionality of the Driver's Privacy Protection Act, Judge Shedd made a federalism ruling that went way beyond even the extreme federalism rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, and it was so bad that the U.S. Supreme Court in a 9-to-0 opinion reversed Judge Shedd's ruling. In Condon v. Reno, Judge Shedd ruled on the constitutionality of the Driver's Privacy Act, which essentially prohibited States from selling and sharing personal information gleaned as they were picking up driver's license information. He said that the Act violated the 10th Amendment as interpreted by the courts in New York v. United States and Printz v. United States. Three years later, Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote for the Court explaining that, to the contrary, neither of the cases applied. He did not get just one of them wrong, he got them both wrong. The Chief Justice wrote that because the Act did not require the States in their sovereign capacity to regulate their own citizens, but instead regulates the States as the owners of the databases. Therefore, the Act was consistent with the constitutional principles enunciated in New York v. Printz. In Crosby v. South Carolina, he found the Family and Medical Leave Act unconstitutional on the grounds that it was not properly enacted under Congress's power.”