Government-Worker Privacy Gets U.S. High Court Review (Update1)
By Greg Stohr
Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether a California police officer’s constitutional rights were violated when the department reviewed personal text messages he had sent and received on a government-issued pager.
Agreeing to hear a city appeal that might have broader implications for employee privacy rights, the justices said they will review a federal appeals court decision that sided with Jeff Quon, a SWAT team member for the city of Ontario.
The appeals court ruling “damages government employers’ ability to effectively use and monitor communications equipment,” Ontario said in its appeal.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Quon had a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in his text messages because the department had implicitly allowed personal use of the pagers. The three-judge panel pointed to the department’s informal policy of having officers pay out of their own pockets when they exceeded the 25,000 monthly character limit.
The city obtained a transcript of Quon’s messages during an investigation to determine whether officers were using their pagers for personal messages. The transcripts showed that Quon had been exchanging sexually explicit messages with his wife, his girlfriend and another SWAT team member.
In urging the Supreme Court not to get involved, Quon said the city had a “self-initiated practice of allowing employees to maintain their privacy” by paying for any extra pager use.
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The justices rejected a related appeal by Arch Wireless, now a unit of USA Mobility Inc., the nation’s largest provider of paging services. The 9th Circuit said the company violated a federal electronic-privacy law by providing the transcript without seeking Quon’s permission.
The case is Ontario v. Quon, 08-1332.
To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: December 14, 2009 12:04 EST
