146
Opinion of the Court
§ 152 and held by agencies that are not pursuing § 152 objectives. We therefore adopt this interpretation.
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
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