As a lawyer, I can tell you it means the original statute was enacted in 1977. It also says "as amended." An amendment or more likely many amendments were made after 1977. They do keep legislative history of statutes. Somewhere you can find the original language and all of the amendments, but there is no way you can say when any part of that statute was written from that pdf, except that it all was written in 1977 or later.

Now, you may continue your disagreements with John Benedict and others. I have my non-expert opinion, which I am not sharing here, but I am not taking sides.

Michael Siskin