The questions of how and when an agency may exempt itself from the Privacy Act are not only central to this case, but also have divided the federal courts of appeals into two camps, a circuitsplit that could be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court should Shearson petition successfully for her case to be heard.
Peterffy had taken the incoming data wire meant for the terminal and spliced it, soldering the split end into a circuit board that his team of programmers and physicists had built from scratch and embedded into the motherboard of an IBM PC.
The two situations in which the Supreme Court is most likely to accept the type of discretionary appeal known as a writ of certiorari are when the circuits below "split, " or when a circuit has issued a bad ruling that will have serious implications for federal law.