Short Circuit 400 | Is Sharing Your Password a Federal Crime?

If you think you’ve worked in a bad job you might want to first hear the first case we have this week, brought to you by IJ’s Michael Soyfer. It might give you a bit of cheerful perspective. An employee was out with Covid when suddenly her employer needed her password for an urgent task. She shared it with a coworker friend which then got the job done. Months later, though, the two workers left the company and sued for sexual harassment. In return, the employer sued them for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a law passed in 1986 in a simpler computing time. The end result, courtesy of the Third Circuit, is that the women did not commit a crime and their harassment claims could proceed. (If they had committed a crime then so might many of us.) Then Sam Gedge of IJ updates us on his Younger abstention quest. A group of physicians were disciplined for saying things about the Covid vaccine that Washington State officials did not like. So they sued those officials to vindicate their rights. But the Ninth Circuit said their claims could not go forward because, among other reasons, there were ongoing matters in a state agency and also because there were matters that weren’t in a state agency. Confused? Sam will try and unconfuse you.

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Stockton v. Brown

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Orin Kerr amicus on the CFAA

IJ’s case for psychologist John Rosemond

IJ’s “caveman blogger” case