Supreme Court Ruling on Texting at Work

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of a police department's search of an employee's messages on a government-owned pager. If all cases were this easy, I think I could be a Supreme Court Justice.

Police sergeant Jeff Quon of Ontario, California was found to be sending as many as 400 messages a month during work hours including sexually explicit text. While the police department had the usual policy warning against any expectation of privacy in texting at work when using department equipment, one police official informally told employees that their messages would not be audited if they paid for charges above the monthly allowance. The Supreme Court found that the search was still reasonable and that people should buy their own devices if they want privacy. Previously, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco had ruled that the informal policy created an expectation of texting privacy at work that would make the search illegal.

It's actually hard to fathom the logic of the San Francisco court and that police official because if the excess message charges were work-related, why should an employee pay? On the other hand, if they weren't work related, wouldn't that be a clue there's not much work going on? You have to hope there's not a lot of serious crime in Ontario, California if these are their best detectives.

Now, back to the guy who sued. It's hard to believe that Quon got caught sending hundreds of dirty messages during work hours and he thinks his rights were violated. Given that he is a police officer, you have to wonder if he is as zealous in protecting others from unreasonable searches. If so, does he only search suspects after giving them advance warning so they'll have time to get rid of everything? Perhaps even stranger are the 3 people who sent Quon messages who decided to join him in his suit. They seem equally oblivious of any wrongdoing in their own apparent sexting at work.

This Supreme Court texting decision sounds right to me and the narrow ruling seems respectful of the more complex cases likely to keep emerging in the area of texting privacy and texting at work. For most employees, there should be no sexting at work or at least buy your own equipment.