Trump's 3 Supreme Court appointees joined the 3 liberal justices to limit a landmark federal cybercrime law

• The Supreme Court put limits on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in a win for civil liberties groups.

• Trump's 3 appointees joined the 3 liberal justices to narrow the scope of the law.

• The court found that the law couldn't be used to prosecute those who accessed computers they were authorized to use.

• See more stories on Insider's business page.

An unusual majority of the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act doesn't cover cases in which a person accesses a computer system they are authorized to use.

Former President Donald Trump's three Supreme Court nominees - Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett - joined liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan to impose limits on the landmark cybercrime law.

The case, Nathan Van Buren v. United States, involved a former Georgia police officer who was accused of looking up a license plate number in the state's database in exchange for money. The court found that though Van Buren accessed the system for improper reasons, he was authorized to use the computer database.

Civil liberties groups had argued that widening the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act could criminalize mundane things, like checking social media at work, according to Politico.

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