Texting at work not protected by law, says Supreme Court
A lot of people text while they are at work. The technology is everywhere in all of the developed nations, and because many people spend the majority of their waking lives in the workplace, it stands to reason that there will be occasions when workers resort to texting at work, regardless of employer policy. The question of whether these communications are automatically private was addressed by the Supreme Court in the California City of Ontario vs. Quon decision, reports the Los Angeles Times.
Source for this article: Texting at work not protected by law, says Supreme Court by Personal Money Store
Texting at work - Understand your employer's policy
Police Sgt. Jeff Quon sent sensitive personal messages via a work pager, and later attempted to invoke his Fourth Amendment right to protection against an illegal search and seizure when his superiors accessed the texting at work evidence. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in favor of the Ontario Police chief, claiming that because there was reason to believe a work policy had been violated, his search of Jeff Quon's texts did not violate any of Quon's constitutional rights. The court decided that the search was a reasonable one.
Sgt. Jeff Quon could lose a lot
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that a police sergeant earns about $50,000 per year, although the figure can be higher depending upon experience, locality and other factors. If Sgt. Jeff Quon happened to be placed on unpaid leave for his texting at work escapades, he'd probably end up seeking sources of fast cash. As it stands, he had already won an appeal against the Ontario Police Department via the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, according to the Times. The Supreme Court decided they would overturn the decision.
Justice Anthony Kennedy explained that the search had 'a legitimate work-related purpose'
Arch Wireless, the contractor that handled the Ontario Police Department's text paging system, was subpoenaed to release Sgt. Quon's racy personal messages to his wife and a girlfriend, according to the L.A. Times. Justice Kennedy of the Supreme Court ruled that the search was justified on work-related grounds and was not unreasonable. Interestingly, Quon's immediate supervisor had told him that he could use the pager for personal messages as long as he paid the extra fees. Yet the nature of all of these personal messages by Jeff Quon warranted the investigation, in the Supreme Court's view. City of Ontario vs. Quon is reportedly the first case on record to involve privacy issues regarding texting at work with any kind of employee-issued device.
Find more information on this topic
Los Angeles Times
latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-worker-texting-20100618,0,7772406.story
Bureau of Labor Statistics
bls.gov/oco/ocos160.htm
Other examples of inappropriate texting at work: (WARNING: Some inappropriate language can be heard)
History of the Predictive Text Swearing
youtube.com/watch?v=6hcoT6yxFoU
