U.S. Supreme Court To Decide Whether Text Messages Subject to Employer Scrutiny
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a federal court appellate ruling that held for California police officers who filed suit alleging that their superiors improperly accessed their electronic exchanges. The plaintiffs filed suit against the city and the test-messaging service for accessing text messages a police officer wrote and received using his department-issued pager, arguing their Fourth Amendment rights were violated. Many of the messages were personal, some sexually explicit. The plaintiffs argued that while there was a policy in place where the police department reserved the right to inspect text messaging on department issued-pagers, there was actually an informal policy of not monitoring usage as long as employees paid the charges for excess usage. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held for the plaintiff, saying that users of test-messaging services have a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” They also held that the text-messaging company improperly turned over transcripts of the messages without the plaintiff’s consent. Both the city and the text-messaging company appealed. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the city’s case but declined the text-messaging company’s writ of certiorari.
For more information, see http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5BD3R020091214 and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/14/AR2009121403689.html