{"id":3633,"date":"2009-12-23T16:02:21","date_gmt":"2009-12-14T14:03:25","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-14T14:03:25","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=3633","title":{"rendered":"SCOTUS grants cert in privacy in work text messages case: City of Ontario v. Quon<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

SCOTUS granted cert today in the text message case of City of Ontario v. Quon, 08-1338<\/a>. SCOTUSBlog here<\/a>, also referring to USA Mobility Wireless v. Quon:<\/p>\n

Among the three new cases the Justices voted to hear, the one with the widest impact appeared to be the case appealed by the city of Ontario, Calif., and its police department \u2014 a Digital Age dispute involving the ubiquitous hand-held communication device. The petition tests whether there is a constitutionally-based right of privacy in text messages for employees of a government agency and, if there is such a right, whether it is less extensive for city employees using government-owned electronic pagers.<\/p>\n

The case involved the city\u2019s review of text messages that a member of a police SWAT, or emergency response, team had sent to another officer with whom he was having a romantic affair, and also messages he had sent to his wife. The Supreme Court\u2019s final decision in the case is expected to amplify or modify a 1987 decision, Connor v. Ortega, recognizing some workplace privacy for public employees, but counseling that courts should take into account the \u201coperational realities of the workplace.\u201d Although the Court agreed to hear the city\u2019s petition, it denied review of a separate appeal by the provider of the city\u2019s pager service, seeking to test the scope of the federal Stored Communications Act as it applied to disclosure of the context of text messages (USA Mobility Wireless v. Quon, et al., 08-1472).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Update: <\/strong>The cert. petition is here<\/a>. The Questions Presented:<\/p>\n

While individuals do not lose Fourth Amendment rights merely because they work for the government, some expectations of privacy held by government employees may be unreasonable due to the “operational realities of the workplace.” O\u2019Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709, 717 (1987) (plurality). Even if there exists a reasonable expectation of privacy, a warrantless search by a government employer–for non-investigatory work-related purposes or for investigations of work-related misconduct–is permissible if reasonable under the circumstances. Id. at 725-26 (plurality). The questions presented are:<\/p>\n

1. Whether a SWAT team member has a reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages transmitted on his SWAT pager, where the police department has an official no-privacy policy but a non-policymaking lieutenant announced an informal policy of allowing some personal use of the pagers.<\/p>\n

2. Whether the Ninth Circuit contravened this Court\u2019s Fourth Amendment precedents and created a circuit conflict by analyzing whether the police department could have used “less intrusive methods” of reviewing text-messages transmitted by a SWAT team member on his SWAT pager.<\/p>\n

3. Whether individuals who send text messages to a SWAT team member\u2019s SWAT pager have a reasonable expectation that their messages will be free from review by the recipient\u2019s government employer.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

SCOTUSWiki is here<\/a>, but, as of today, there is nothing there.<\/p>\n

News stories are in the NYTimes<\/a> and LATimes<\/a> and WaPo<\/a>. Blogged here at Volokh Conspiracy<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}