Plaintiffs in the Ninth Circuit may want to avoid claims that an employee violated the CFAA after a court rejected a principal’s lawsuit against an online student prank. In Matot v. CH, the District Court of Oregon dismissed the suit, finding that the students’ use of the principal’s name and likeness gave no standing for a suit against the student perpetrators or their parents.
The court cited the Ninth Circuit’s decisions in LVRC Holdings LLC v. Brekka, 581 F.3d 1127 (9th Cir. 2009) and United States v. Nosal, 676 F.3d 854, 862 (9th Cir. 2012), which held that claims under the CFAA fail where the court can “construe criminal statutes narrowly so that Congress will not unintentionally turn ordinary citizens into criminals.” Citing numerous press reports, the court held that lying on social media is common and can serve the purpose of law enforcement.
The court did admit that lying on social media can have serious consequences. Perhaps the most famous example of such consequences arose in United States v. Drew, 259 F.R.D. 449 (C.D. Cal. 2009), in which a mother posed as a teenage boy in order to cyber-bully her daughter’s classmate, who ultimately committed suicide.
For more on this case, see Creating Parody Social Media Accounts Doesn’t Violate Computer Fraud & Abuse Act – Matot v. CH on the blog of Eric Goldman, Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law and director of the school’s High Tech Law Institute.