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Rep Jamie Raskin said in a media report that he was looking into the possibility of a class action lawsuit against Elon Musk for his allegedly illegal access of Treasury Department data. Raskin says that his legal basis are violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

"The congressman said he has been studying the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, which Reagan pushed after he saw “War Games” at Camp David and grew concerned about the security of government computers. Reagan wanted it to be a crime to have unauthorized access to obtain and distribute other people’s information. The act allows a citizen whose private data has been compromised through a breach of government computers to sue for damages, Raskin said Sunday on MSNBC." https://www.baltimoresun.com/2025/02/09/how-jamie-raskin-is-using-a-ronald-reagan-act-to-push-a-class-action-lawsuit-against-elon-musk/

Original MSNBC video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpvjnY56uO0

• Is Raskin's idea legally viable in that his suit would not be thrown out due to lack of standing or other highly visible issues?

• Would this would be a state or federal civil suit? And not a criminal or federal suit, which is pardonable?

BlueDogRanch
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The answers to several of your questions are fairly straightforward.

  • If someone pursued this, it would be a civil case and not a criminal one, meaning that it could not be waved away with a pardon.

  • The plaintiff could file in either state court or federal court. If they filed in state court, Musk would have essentially unilateral authority to remove it to federal court.

  • The plaintiffs would have standing if they could demonstrate that they had suffered some concrete injury, particular to them, that could be redressed by court action. So if you alleged that your bank account was drained because of Musk's sloppy handling of your banking information, you'd probably have standing because you suffered some specific injury and the court could order Musk to make you whole. If you just alleged that the law was broken because of Musk's sloppy handling of your banking information, that's neither concrete nor particularized, so you would not have standing.

But standing only tells us whether you're allowed into court in the first place; it says nothing about whether you're going to win, which I suspect Raskin would not. There's no civil liability unless Musk engaged in one of the seven behaviors prohibited under 18 U.S. Code § 1030(a), all of which involve accessing a computer "without authorization."

Raskin could argue that Musk shouldn't be accessing these computers or that granting Musk access is dangerous for whatever reason, but if the President of the United States takes the stand and says he personally authorized access, it's hard to imagine a judge saying the access was not authorized.

And if they can't prove that, my read is that the lawsuit has to fail.

bdb484
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