A divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that debt collection companies can’t be sued for trying to recover years-old credit card debt from people who seek bankruptcy protection.

The 5-3 ruling is a blow to consumer groups that complain debt collectors are unfairly misleading people into repaying old debts even when they are not required to under the law.

The court sided with Midland Funding, which was trying to collect $1,879 in debt an Alabama woman had incurred more than 10 years earlier.

While the woman ultimately avoided paying the debt, a federal appeals court said she could sue Midland for trying to collect it as a violation the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. That law prohibits collection companies from making a “false, deceptive, or misleading representation” or trying to recover debt through “unfair or unconscionable means.”

Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen Breyer broke with his liberal colleagues to say efforts to recoup old debt during the bankruptcy process do not violate the law. He said it wasn’t false or misleading because bankruptcy law allows such claims.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the practice “is both unfair and unconscionable.”

Judge: Uber can’t use Waymo tech

A federal judge’s order that bars Uber from using technology taken by a star engineer before he left Waymo is bad news for Uber and likely will hurt the ride-hailing company’s own self-driving research, legal experts say.

The ruling by District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco on Monday was mainly a victory for Waymo, the autonomous car unit spun off from Google, even though the judge refused to order a halt to Uber’s autonomous car research as Waymo had requested, the experts said.

Waymo showed “compelling evidence” that a former engineer downloaded thousands of confidential files before leaving the company, the order said. The engineer set up firms, which then were sold to Uber.

United changing cockpit codes

United Airlines is changing the keypad codes used to open cockpit doors after the previous codes were accidentally posted on a public website.

The airline sent a memo to pilots over the weekend telling them to use “alternative security measures,” a spokeswoman said Monday.

The spokeswoman said the breach in security measures was not the result of hacking and did not cause any flights to be delayed or canceled.

In a statement, the Chicago-based airline said it uses “a number of measures” in addition to the access codes to keep cockpits secure, and it was working to fix the situation as soon as possible.