JUSTICE THOMAS delivered the opinion of the Court.
We address in this case whether 23 U. S. C. § 409, which protects information "compiled or collected" in connection
I
A
Beginning with the Highway Safety Act of 1966, Congress has endeavored to improve the safety of our Nation's highways by encouraging closer federal and state cooperation with respect to road improvement projects. To that end, Congress has adopted several programs to assist the States in identifying highways in need of improvements and in funding those improvements. See, e. g., 23 U. S. C. §§ 130 (Railway-Highway Crossings), 144 (Highway Bridge Replacement and Rehabilitation Program), and 152 (Hazard Elimination Program). Of relevance to this case is the Hazard Elimination Program (Program) which provides state and local governments with funding to improve the most dangerous sections of their roads. To be eligible for funds under the Program, a state or local government must undertake a thorough evaluation of its public roads. Specifically, § 152(a)(1) requires them to
Not long after the adoption of the Program, the Secretary of Transportation reported to Congress that the States objected to the absence of any confidentiality with respect to their compliance measures under § 152. H. R. Doc. No. 94-366, p. 36 (1976). According to the Secretary's report,
To address the concerns expressed by the States and the DOT, in 1987, Congress adopted 23 U. S. C. § 409, which provided:
The proper scope of § 409 became the subject of some dispute among the lower courts. Some state courts, for example, concluded that § 409 addressed only the admissibility of relevant documents at trial and did not apply to pretrial discovery.
Responding to these developments, Congress amended § 409 in two ways. In 1991, Congress expressly made the statute applicable to pretrial discovery, see Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, § 1035(a), 105 Stat. 1978, and in 1995, Congress added the phrase "or collected" after the word "compiled," National Highway System Designation Act of 1995, § 323, 109 Stat. 591. As amended, § 409 now reads:
B
Ignacio Guillen's wife, Clementina Guillen-Alejandre, died on July 5, 1996, in an automobile accident at the intersection of 168th Street East and B Street East (168/B intersection), in Pierce County, Washington. Several months before the accident, petitioner had requested § 152 funding for this intersection, but the request had been denied. Petitioner renewed its application for funding on April 3, 1996, and the second request was approved on July 26, 1996, only three weeks after the accident occurred.
Beginning on August 16, 1996, counsel for respondents sought to obtain from petitioner information about accidents that had occurred at the 168/B intersection.
Respondents first filed an action alleging that petitioner's refusal to disclose the relevant documents violated the
While the appeal in the PDA action was pending, respondents filed a separate action, asserting that petitioner had been negligent in failing to install proper traffic controls at the 168/B intersection. In connection with the tort action, respondents served petitioner with interrogatories seeking information regarding accidents that had occurred at the 168/B intersection. Petitioner refused to comply with the discovery request, once again relying on § 409. Respondents successfully sought an order to compel, and petitioner moved for discretionary appellate review of the trial judge's interlocutory order. The Washington Court of Appeals
On review, the Washington Court of Appeals in large part affirmed the decisions below. In interpreting § 409, the court distinguished between an agency that collects or compiles information for purposes unrelated to § 152 and one that collects and compiles information pursuant to § 152. In the court's view, documents held by the first agency would not be protected by § 409, even if they subsequently were used for § 152 purposes, whereas documents held by the second agency would be protected, so long as their collection or compilation was the result of § 152 efforts. Applying these principles, the court concluded that only one of the documents at issue in the PDA case — the draft memorandum by the county's public works director, see n. 3, supra — was protected by § 409 because it had been prepared for § 152 purposes. The rest were not protected because respondents "carefully requested reports in the hands of the sheriff or other law enforcement agencies, not reports or data `collected or compiled' by the Public Works Department." 96 Wn.App. 862, 873, 982 P.2d 123, 129 (1999). The appellate court also expressed doubt about the constitutionality of § 409 as applied in state courts, but decided not to resolve the question because it was not raised. Id., at 875, n. 26, 982 P. 2d, at 130, n. 26. Petitioner appealed once again.
The Washington Supreme Court's decision followed a three-step analysis. The court first determined that disclosure of the information respondents sought under both the PDA and state discovery rules would be appropriate only if the materials requested by respondents were not protected by § 409.
Second, examining the scope of § 409, the Washington Supreme Court rejected, as "unsound in principle and unworkable in practice," 144 Wn.2d 696, 727, 31 P.3d 628, 646 (2001), the appellate court's view that § 409 drew a distinction between documents "as held by" the Public Works Department
Having so construed § 409, the court proceeded to consider whether the adoption of the 1995 amendment to § 409 was a proper exercise of Congress' powers under the Spending, Commerce, and Necessary and Proper Clauses of Article I of the United States Constitution. With respect to the Spending Clause, the court found that "barring the admissibility and discovery in state court of accident reports and other traffic and accident materials and `raw data' that were originally prepared for routine state and local purposes, simply because they are `collected' for, among other reasons, federal purposes pursuant to a federal statute" did not reasonably serve any "valid federal interest in the operation of the federal safety enhancement program." Id., at 737, 31 P. 3d, at 651. With respect to the Commerce Clause, the court concluded that § 409 was not an "integral part" of the regulation of the federal-aid highway system and, thus, could not be upheld under Hodel v. Indiana, 452 U.S. 314 (1981). 144 Wash. 2d, at 742, 31 P. 3d, at 654. Finally, with respect to the Necessary and Proper Clause, the court ruled that, although Congress could require state courts to enforce a federal privilege protecting materials "that would not have been created but-for federal mandates such as . . . [§]152," it was "neither `necessary' nor `proper' for Congress in 1995 to extend that privilege to traffic and accident materials and raw data created and collected for state and local purposes, simply because they are also collected and used for federal purposes." Id., at 743, 31 P. 3d, at 654-655.
In light of its conclusion that the 1995 amendment to § 409 exceeded Congress' power under the Constitution, and,
Three justices concurred only in the result. They disagreed with the majority's broad reading of the statute and would have held that § 409 precludes a potential plaintiff only from obtaining information from an agency that collected that information for § 152 purposes.
We granted certiorari to resolve the question of the constitutionality of this federal statute, 535 U.S. 1033 (2002), and now reverse.
II
Before addressing the merits of petitioner's claims, we must first consider whether we have jurisdiction to hear the case. Under 28 U. S. C. § 1257(a), this Court has certiorari jurisdiction to review "[f]inal judgments or decrees rendered by the highest court of a State in which a decision could be had . . . where the validity of a . . . statute of the United States is drawn in question . . . on the ground of its being repugnant to the Constitution . . . of the United States." As a general matter, to be reviewed by this Court, a state-court judgment must be final "`as an effective determination of the litigation and not of merely interlocutory or intermediate steps therein.'" Jefferson v. City of Tarrant, 522 U.S. 75, 81 (1997) (quoting Market Street R. Co. v. Railroad Comm'n of Cal., 324 U.S. 548, 551 (1945)). We have acknowledged, however, that certain state-court judgments can be treated as final for jurisdictional purposes, even though further
Respondents contend the decision below did not result in a final judgment for purposes of § 1257(a) because the Washington Supreme Court remanded the case for further proceedings. They are only partially correct.
As we have already described, we have now before us a consolidated case consisting of two separate actions: an action under the State of Washington's Public Disclosure Act and a tort action. Respondents are correct that the decision below does not constitute a final judgment with respect to the tort action. In that case, the Washington Supreme Court resolved only a discovery dispute; it did not determine the final outcome of the litigation. Nor do any of the exceptions outlined in Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, supra, apply to the tort action.
We reach a different conclusion regarding the PDA action. In that suit, the Washington Supreme Court was asked to review only the appellate court's ruling that four of the five documents requested by respondents were not protected under § 409 and therefore should be disclosed under the PDA.
III
We turn now to the merits. Petitioner essentially agrees with the Washington Supreme Court's expansive reading of § 409, but argues that the Washington Supreme Court erred in concluding that Congress was without power to enact the 1995 amendment to § 409. Before addressing the constitutional question, however, we must determine the statute's proper scope.
A
1
According to petitioner, a document initially prepared and then held by an agency (here the county sheriff) for purposes unrelated to § 152 becomes protected under § 409 when a copy of that document is collected by another agency (here the Public Works Department) for purposes of § 152. Under petitioner's view, for example, an accident report prepared and held by the county sheriff for purposes unrelated to § 152 would become protected under § 409 as soon as a copy of that report is sent to the Public Works Department to be used in connection with petitioner's § 152 funding application. Consequently, a person seeking a copy of the accident report either from the county sheriff or from the Public Works Department would not be able to obtain it.
The United States, as intervenor, proposes a third interpretation: § 409 protects all reports, surveys, schedules, lists, or data actually compiled or collected for § 152 purposes, but does not protect information that was originally compiled or collected for purposes unrelated to § 152 and that is currently held by the agencies that compiled or collected it, even if the information was at some point "collected" by another agency for § 152 purposes. Brief for United States 28-36. Respondents concede that this is a defensible reading of the statute. Brief for Respondents 23-24, 25. Under this interpretation, an accident report collected only for law enforcement purposes and held by the county sheriff would not be protected under § 409 in the hands of the county sheriff, even though that same report would be protected in the hands of the Public Works Department, so long as the department first obtained the report for § 152 purposes. We agree with the Government's interpretation of the statute.
2
We have often recognized that statutes establishing evidentiary privileges must be construed narrowly because privileges impede the search for the truth. Baldrige v. Shapiro,
Of the three interpretations outlined above, respondents' clearly gives the statute the narrowest application. Nevertheless, we decline to adopt it, as that reading would render the 1995 amendment to § 409 (changing the language from "compiled" to "compiled or collected") an exercise in futility. We have said before that, "[w]hen Congress acts to amend a statute, we presume it intends its amendment to have real and substantial effect." Stone v. INS, 514 U.S. 386, 397 (1995). Yet, under respondents' view, § 409 as amended in 1995 would protect from disclosure only information that was already protected before the amendment, i.e., information generated for § 152 purposes. That reading gives the amendment no "real and substantial effect" and, accordingly, cannot be the proper understanding of the statute.
Petitioner's reading, by contrast, while permissible, gives the statute too broad of a reach given the language of the statute, thus conflicting with our rule that, when possible, privileges should be construed narrowly. See, e.g., Baldrige, supra, at 360.
The interpretation proposed by the Government, however, suffers neither of these faults. It gives effect to the 1995 amendment by making clear that § 409 protects not just the information an agency generates, i.e., compiles, for § 152 purposes, but also any information that an agency collects from other sources for § 152 purposes. And, it also takes a narrower view of the privilege by making it inapplicable to information compiled or collected for purposes unrelated to
Our conclusion is reinforced by the history of the 1995 amendment. As we have already noted, the phrase "or collected" was added to § 409 to address confusion among the lower courts about the proper scope of § 409 and to overcome judicial reluctance to protect under § 409 raw data collected for § 152 purposes. See supra, at 134-136. By amending the statute, Congress wished to make clear that § 152 was not intended to be an effort-free tool in litigation against state and local governments. Compare, e.g., Robertson v. Union Pacific R. Co., 954 F.2d 1433, 1435 (CA8 1992) (recognizing that § 409 was intended to "prohibit federally required record-keeping from being used as a `tool ... in private litigation'" (quoting Light v. New York, 149 Misc.2d 75, 80, 560 N.Y.S.2d 962, 965 (Ct. Cl. 1990)), with authorities cited supra, at 134-135. However, the text of § 409 evinces no intent to make plaintiffs worse off than they would have been had § 152 funding never existed. Put differently, there is no reason to interpret § 409 as prohibiting the disclosure of information compiled or collected for purposes unrelated to § 152, held by government agencies not involved in administering § 152, if, before § 152 was adopted, plaintiffs would have been free to obtain such information from those very agencies.
B
Having determined that § 409 protects only information compiled or collected for § 152 purposes, and does not protect information compiled or collected for purposes unrelated to § 152, as held by the agencies that compiled or collected that information, we now consider whether § 409 is a proper exercise of Congress' authority under the Constitution. We conclude that it is.
It is well established that the Commerce Clause gives Congress authority to "regulate the use of the channels of interstate commerce." United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 558
As already discussed, supra, at 133, Congress adopted § 152 to assist state and local governments in reducing hazardous conditions in the Nation's channels of commerce. That effort was impeded, however, by the States' reluctance to comply fully with the requirements of § 152, as such compliance would make state and local governments easier targets for negligence actions by providing would-be plaintiffs a centralized location from which they could obtain much of the evidence necessary for such actions. In view of these circumstances, Congress could reasonably believe that adopting a measure eliminating an unforeseen side effect of the information-gathering requirement of § 152 would result in more diligent efforts to collect the relevant information, more candid discussions of hazardous locations, better informed decisionmaking, and, ultimately, greater safety on our Nation's roads. Consequently, both the original § 409 and the 1995 amendment can be viewed as legislation aimed at improving safety in the channels of commerce and increasing protection for the instrumentalities of interstate commerce. As such, they fall within Congress' Commerce Clause power.
It is so ordered.
FootNotes
A brief of amicus curiae urging affirmance was filed for the Association of Trial Lawyers of America by Jeffrey Robert White.
Briefs of amici curiae were filed for the Washington State Trial Lawyers Association Foundation by Debra L. Stephens and Bryan P. Harnetiaux; for Lynn A. Baker et al. by Ms. Baker, pro se; and for Robert Whitmer et al. by Charles K. Wiggins, Kenneth W. Masters, and Keith L. Kessler.
"Upon the motion of any person having been denied an opportunity to inspect or copy a public record by an agency, the superior court in the county in which a record is maintained may require the responsible agency to show cause why it has refused to allow inspection or copying of a specific public record or class of records. The burden of proof shall be on the agency to establish that refusal to permit public inspection and copying is in accordance with a statute that exempts or prohibits disclosure in whole or in part of specific information or records." Wash. Rev. Code § 42.17.340(1) (2000).
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