NRA Group, LLC v. Nicole Durenleau, et al.

In Van Buren v. United States, 593 U.S. 374 (2021), the Court articulated a “gates up/gates down” formulation for determining whether an employee exceeded their authorized access to an employer computer system under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) but expressly reserved the question of whether employer contracts and policies could support a finding of no authorization. The first question presented is whether, in its recent precedential decision, the Third Circuit contradicted Van Buren and impermissibly narrowed the CFAA in contravention of its statutory text by holding that, absent evidence of code-based hacking, the CFAA definitively forecloses all employer claims premised on a breach of workplace computer-use policies by current employees. The second question presented is whether the Third Circuit improperly applied the rule of lenity and added a heightened scienter requirement to Respondent Jamie Badaczewski’s conduct in accessing a computer using Respondent Nicole Durenleau’s password. The third question presented is whether a client list including passwords constitutes a trade secret under the Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”).