Supreme Court rules in favor of California police chief who read employee's texts

[SoCalDem]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-worker-texting-20100618,0,7772406.story?track=rss

The justices say the Ontario employer's perusal of an officer's sexually explicit messages, sent on his work pager, is justified and didn't violate the 4th Amendment. Justices hear case of Ontario police officer who sent risque messages

By David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau

June 18, 2010

Reporting from Washington —

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a broad right of privacy for workers who send text messages on the job, ruling that supervisors may read through an employee's communications if they suspect rules are being violated.

In a 9-0 ruling, the justices said a police chief in Ontario, Calif., did not violate the constitutional rights of an officer when he read the transcripts of sexually explicit text messages sent from the officer's work pager. In this case, the high court said, the police chief's reading of the officer's text messages was a search, but it was also reasonable.

The court's ruling comes at a time when most U.S. workers spend at least part of their day talking on phones or sending messages on computers or cellphones, many supplied by their employers. At issue was whether the 4th Amendment's ban on "unreasonable searches" puts any limits on searches by public employers. The court said the limits were minimal, so long as the employer had a "work-related purpose" for inspecting an employee's desk or reading messages sent by the employee on an agency paging system.

This decision applies directly to the more than 20 million employees of state and local governments, as well as federal workers. In the past, the court's decisions on the right to privacy have also influenced decisions in the private sector.

The ruling tossed out a privacy suit brought by a former police sergeant against the police chief in Ontario. Concerned that officers were using their text pagers mostly for personal messages, Chief Lloyd Scharf decided in 2002 to read some of them.

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