The United States Supreme Court has agreed to decide an important employee privacy case—City of Ontario v. Quon—that is likely to have far-reaching implications for public and private employers alike.
The court will determine: (1) whether text messages sent by an employee using employer-owned equipment are private and therefore entitled to legal protection, and (2) whether messages sent to an employee using that same equipment are private.
How To Survive an Employee Lawsuit: 10 Tips for Success
With lawsuits against employers becoming ever more common—and jury verdicts skyrocketing—your risk of getting sued has increased dramatically even if you’ve done all the right things. Learn how to protect yourself with our free White Paper, How To Survive an Employee Lawsuit: 10 Tips for Success.
The Ontario, California police department had a policy stating that electronic communications sent using city-owned equipment and networks should relate only to official matters, and employees should not expect that such communications would be private. Although the policy did not specifically address text messages, a lieutenant made statements to officers suggesting that the city would not actually read their messages.
Four members of the city’s SWAT team routinely exceeded their monthly allotment of text messages. As a result, the city conducted an audit and discovered that many of the messages sent and received by these officers were of a personal nature, and were often sexually explicit.
Upon learning that the city had read their text messages, the officers sued both the city and the third-party network provider. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the officers, and the U.S. Supreme Court has now agreed to review the decision.
Although this case involves a public employer, if the court rules that the employees do in fact have a privacy interest in text messages sent on company equipment, the decision could significantly affect the policies of all employers, both public and private, regarding company equipment and communications.
We’ll have more on this case, and how to draft and enforce a bullet-proof employee electronic communications policy, in an upcoming issue of California Employer Advisor.