The case, the first in which the court addressed the scope of the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, concerned whether Nathan Van Buren, a Georgia police sergeant, violated the law when he took outside payment to run a license plate search on his police computer. Lower courts ruled that, in addition to violating department police rules, Van Buren had broken federal law because the search exceeded his "authorized access."
The court ruled 6-3 for Van Buren, with Barrett writing the majority opinion. An ideologically diverse range of justices joined Barrett's opinion, including Justice Neil Gorsuch, with whom, like Thomas up unto this point, Barrett had voiced complete agreement during her time on the bench.
Chief Justice John Roberts, however, took the opposing side and joined Thomas in his dissent. That left Justice Stephen Breyer as the most senior member of the majority — meaning that the court's most prominent liberal assigned the opinion to Barrett.
In a reversal of the lower court decision, Barrett wrote that Van Buren only would have broken the law had he used a part of the computer to which he did not normally have access.
"This provision covers those who obtain information from particular areas in the computer — such as files, folders, or databases — to which their computer access does not extend," Barrett wrote of the 1986 law. "It does not cover those who, like Van Buren, have improper motives for obtaining information that is otherwise available to them."
Barrett added that if the majority had taken a broad view of the law, it would risk exposing millions of people who use their work computers for non-work purposes to prosecution for a violation of federal law. After pointing out that many workplaces mandate that company-provided electronic devices only be used for work, Barrett wrote that, in reality, many people use them for recreation or other tasks.
"On the Government’s reading of the statute, an employee who sends a personal e-mail or reads the news using her work computer has violated the CFAA," Barrett wrote.
Thomas wrote in his dissent, joined by Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, that Barrett's reasoning was "flawed for a number of reasons." Most immediate of these, he said, was that Van Buren was not "entitled" to the computer simply because he was allowed to use it for certain police functions.
Thomas illustrated his point with a number of examples. A valet is allowed to drive a car to the parking spot but not joyride in it, he wrote. Similarly, an employee can pull a fire alarm in the event of a fire, but not to avoid a meeting. Thomas wrote that the same principle applied in this case, in which Van Buren had no authorization to use the computer when he did. Thomas also disagreed with Barrett's interpretation of property law.
"The text makes one thing clear," Thomas wrote of the CFAA. "Using a police database to obtain information in circumstances where that use is expressly forbidden is a crime."
The ideological split marked not just the first time that Barrett split from Thomas, but also an instance of all three of former President Donald Trump's appointees, Barrett, Gorsuch, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, siding with the court's liberals against the older conservatives.
Amy Coney Barrett ends streak of complete agreement with Clarence Thomas | Washington Examiner
No comments:
Post a Comment