The case that led to Sanchez' decision began in June 2003 when a soldier named Michael Stollenwerk tried to buy a handgun at a gun store in Lancaster County where he was a legal resident. He provided some information but refused to give his social security number (SS#) for the police background check, which is required by state law (the Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act -- see below). The state police refused to conduct the check without his SS#, so he was not allowed to buy the gun. Moreover, although state law gave Stollenwerk the right to appeal a denial of his permit for other reasons, it did not allow him to appeal the refusal by the State Police to conduct a background check without a SS#.

In his decision, Sanchez agreed with Stollenwerk, but to understand his argument you need to know something about the 1974 Federal Privacy Act, the 1993 Federal Brady Act, and the 1995 amendments to the Pennsylvania State Uniform Firearms Act (PA UFA). In 1974, the US Congress enacted the Privacy Act which governs how information about individuals is collected and used. Only two sections actually tell people how to act -- section 3, which explains how to collect information, and section 7, which limits how that information can be used. In 1993 Congress passed the Brady Act which required handgun purchasers to obtain a state permit before someone can sell them a gun, and specified the information that the purchaser must provide (name, sex, race, date-of-birth and state-of-residence). The Brady Act also made disclosure of a social security number or military identification number optional (along with other information like height, weight, color of eyes, etc.)

In 1995, Pennsylvania amended its UFA in response to the Brady Bill and in 1998 it created the Pennsylvania Instant Check System to process requests for criminal background checks. The 1995 version of the UFA requires a state police background check before issuing a permit, and it requires provision of a SS# in order to carry out the background check. So in order to buy a handgun in Pennsylvania, an individual must 1) provide personal information including SS# (required by the PA UFA, subject to limits from the Federal Privacy Act), 2) wait for the results of a criminal background check (required by UFA and governed by the rules of the Pennsylvania Instant Check System), 3) and receive a permit from the County in which the individual resides (required by the Brady Act). At least, that's how it worked until Sanchez made his decision.

Sanchez reviewed court cases that have set limits on the Privacy Act over the years. Not surprisingly, court decisions since 2000 have tended to restrict the application of the Privacy Act by exempting businesses, banks and other non-federal agencies, and specific uses like bail applications. In January 2006, only a month before the Sanchez decision, a federal appeals court in Michigan ruled that the Privacy Act did not apply to state or local agencies because of the way that the word "agency" is defined in the law. [See sidebar] Instead of the Michigan decision, however, Sanchez chose to rely on a 2003 case [ Schwier v. Cox, 340 F.3d 1284, 1288 (11th Cir. 2003)] that rejected the State of Georgia's practice of requiring SS#s in order to register voters.

Regarding the "right" to a handgun permit, Sanchez merely observed that "It is beyond cavil the legal ability to purchase or obtain a license to carry a handgun is a `right, benefit, or privilege.'" Handguns are not rifles or shotguns, and while the Second Amendment to the US Constitution clearly states that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," each state sets its own standards for gun permits, purchasing and use (setting the dates of hunting season, for example). By declaring that access to handguns is beyond cavil (i.e. dispute), Sanchez implies that any effort to control their use is automatically suspect.

If you are worried about big government that uses a "war on terror" to justify phone tapping and internment camps, then Sanchez' ruling might look like good news -- a challenge to efforts to create a police state in America. But Sanchez didn't prohibit background checks for gun buyers, he just made it them less efficient. That hurts people who live with the fear of street crime as well as law enforcement officials charged with performing background checks.

The judges' reasoning? The Privacy Act relies on definitions from another federal act, the "Freedom of Information Act," which defines an "agency" in a way that limits them strictly to bodies of the federal government. In other words, only employees and departments of the federal government are bound by the Federal Privacy Act, so Schmitt had no right to sue the City of Detroit for accidently disclosing his social security number.

Read the full text of the judges' decision in Daniel A. Schmitt v. City of Detroit et al

View the decisions mentioned in this article:
Stollenwerk v. Miller et al (Pennsylvania)
Schwier v. Cox (Georgia)
Schmitt v. City of Detroit et al (Michigan)

The trip began, as most SEPTA trips begin in West Chester, with a ride on bus 104. The 104 bus leaves from the University about every half hour, stops at the Market Street Transportation Center in the new Justice Center parking garage, and then heads east along Market Street and West Chester Pike all of the way to West Philadelphia's 69th Street Terminal. It follows the trolley route operated by the "Philadelphia, Castle Rock & West Chester Railway" between January 2, 1899 and June 4, 1954. Afterwards, first the Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company and now SEPTA operate the same route with buses. Currently, buses from West Chester start at 5:00AM and run throughout the day an evening until the last bus at 1:15AM.

The 8:37 bus was not crowded and it left on time. Although there was construction on some of the side streets, rush hour was at an end and the bus made good time as far as Newtown Square. That's where WCJIM got off to catch the #118 bus to Media, which showed up right on time at 8:14. It follows PA252, with a detour to the Delaware County Community College campus, along the crest of the Springton Reservoir and past Rose Tree Park to downtown Media. It continues along Providence Road to Chester, but WCJIM got off to look around Media a bit, where he discovered the historic home of Dr. Philip Jaisohn, the first person born in Korea to become a US citizen.

The next leg was one of the reasons for maing the trip in the first place. SEPTA operates a surface trolley from Media to 69th Street every half hour that, according to Borough Council president Paul Fitzpatrick -- who grew up in Delaware County -- offers a beautiful ride through woods much of the way. He was telling the truth. The route crosses the headwaters of various tributaries of the Crum Creek, all of which are still covered with woods. The route also passes the E. T. Richardson Middle School (of the Springfield Delco School District) where WCJIM speaks to 7th grade classes each year, plus Springfield High School and the monumental Monsignor Bonner High School.

 
Marker at Media's Jaisohn house

 
The #101 trolley in Media

 
Bonner High School

At 69th Street, the next task was to figure out how to get to Girard Avenue in order to ride one of the refurbished PUC streetcars. Fortunately, schedules for every SEPTA line are available at the 69th Street Terminal, but after glancing through a few and trying to find the correct departure point for the #30 bus, WCJIM took the easy way out. SEPTA's routes in Philadelphia closely follow the city's street grid, with buses, trolleys or subways following the major arteries and buses running perpendicular to fill in the holes. From Center City south, east and west (and maybe north -- WCJIM didn't get that far), there is no place that is more than two blocks from a SEPTA stop.

With that in mind, WCJIM boarded the Market Street-Frankford elevated train, which heads north towards City Hall from 69th Street. Actually, he boarded a shuttle bus to take passengers past the reconstruction work that is underway between 52nd and 63rd Streets, but that produced no delay as traffic was light and SEPTA had a line of shuttle buses standing by to take passengers. [Historical note: The Market Street "El" was constructed in 1905- 1906. Moulton H. Davis, the namesake for one of West Chester's fuel oil companies, worked on the project.]

The shuttle bus stopped at Market & 40th Street to allow passengers to board the "El" which is actually a subway at this point. WCJIM looked for one of the perpendicular bus routes and found #40 within ten minutes. It took him northwest across Powellton, Haverford and Lancaster Avenues to Girard Avenue, where the restored streetcars operate roughly every fifteen minutes in the middle of the day. Heading east, they pass over SEPTA's R-5 suburban train line to Thorndale (more on that in a bit) and pass the Philadelphia Zoo, cross the Schuylkill River, go around Girard College and cross Market Street. At 3rd Street, WCJIM got off and watched the trolley disappear towards the waterfront, where it turns northeast and goes as far as Port Richmond.

WCJIM got off at 3rd Street because he had an errand to run at 3rd and South Street, but also because he saw something which caught his eye. An unlabelled statue of what appeared to be a conquistador sits near the corner of 3rd and Girard, but despite WCJIM's best efforts, he did not discover its identity. In the process, he missed the #57 bus which heads south from that point, so he started walking.

The neighborhood is called Northern Liberties and it was worth a look. Besides impressive old churches, new condo construction, and an interesting mix of old industrial and restored residential buildings, it also includes the shop where Philadelphia's "Ducks" -- the military-surplus amphibious trucks used for riverfront tours -- get their maintenance. Neighborhood activists were in evidence as well, as shown by window signs reading "CasiNO!" Several middle- aged black women, a white skateboard dude and a couple of Philadelphia public works employees all responded with friendly greetings; only a pair of "yuppies" and a couple of real-estate types acted as if they were too busy to say hello.

That was one of the most interesting things about the day -- talking with the people who take public transportation and meeting people in new neighborhoods. On the #104 bus out of West Chester, the passengers looked like a cross-section of the Borough. Between Media and 69th Street, there was a wide range of people, accents, colors, and ethnicities, and a higher percentage of young women travelling with children. The shuttle bus from 69th Street to 40th Street still carried a crowd that looked mostly "suburban" -- not a surprise since so many suburban lines meet at 69th Street. But once WCJIM got onto bus #40 and started taking lines that criss-crossed the city, the passenger profile became that of lower-middle-class Philadelphia: mostly black, some Asian, a large number of students and a lesser number of elderly. The last group was more willing to enter conversations with a stranger, and WCJIM heard an eyewitness account of Dr. Martin Luther King's visit to Philadelphia in the early 1960s, learned about research on chimpanzee sociology in Botswana, and heard several opinions of the state's casino licensing plans (all negative).

 
The statue at 3rd & Girard

 
Anti-casino sign

 
A "Duck" gets maintenance on 4th Street

The "Main Line of Public Works" was built by the State of Pennsylvania in the early 1830s to connect Philadelphia to Pittsburgh using a combination of railroads, rivers, canals and stationary steam engines to move loads over the mountains. It was purchased by a group of Philadelphia investors in 1857 and became a major route for the Pennsylvania Railroad, whose system ultimately reached as far west as Chicago. It sparked the first wave of suburban development in the late 19th century, and was electrified as far as Paoli by 1915. Nowadays, it carries both SEPTA trains as far as Thorndale (west of Downingtown) and AMTRAK trains to Harrisburg and points further west.

The train made a stop at 30th Street station and then began to climb away from the Schuylkill River. It passed the Philadelphia Zoo and under Girard Avenue (where WCJIM had seen it a few hours earlier), then continued past SEPTA's Overbrook maintenance facility and under City Line Avenue into Delaware County. The list of stations is familiar, not only to modern commuters but also to anyone who grew up in the heyday of railroads -- Merion, Narberth, Wynnewood, Ardmore, Bryn Mawr, Rosemont, and so on -- only nowadays instead of waiting taxicabs, all of the stations seem to sport Park-n-Ride lots.

The train pulled into Exton Station on time, but that presented the first scheduling problem of the day. Bus #92 stops at the station on its way in both directions between the Exton Mall and West Chester's Parkway Plaza, but it left the station three minutes before the train arrived and the next West Chester-bound bus was not due for another eighty-two minutes. By the looks of the people who got off of the train, most passengers use their own cars, but that didn't do WCJIM any good. So he decided to see how far he could walk, and cautiously made his way along PA100 to the corner at Boot Road.

That's where it became clear that PA100 was designed to inhibit pedestrians. With zooming cars muscling each other for space as two lines squeezed down to one, WCJIM decided that walking on the shoulder was not feasible -- at least not during rush hour. Unfortunately, there were too many other obstacles and no sidewalks, so walking in people's front yards was not an option either. So WCJIM bought a cool drink at a nearby convenience store and settled down with a book to wait for the bus.

Living in West Chester has its benefits, however. After about twenty minutes, WCJIM heard a voice from the parking lot call out "Do you want a lift?" It was someone who had driven by the bus stop and then doubled back to offer him a ride. A few minutes later, he was back in the Borough, delivered to his doorstep by someone who knew him from West Chester University.

The most remarkable thing about a day which included conversations, sight-seeing, errands and local history was the price -- the SEPTA daypass cost only $5.50. That bought passage on to five buses (six, if you count #92), two trolleys and one train, and covered roughly seventy-five miles. In a car that gets twenty-five miles to the gallon, the gasoline alone would cost around nine dollars. You can do the math yourself. WCJIM already has, and that's why he likes to ride SEPTA.